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The internet is changing, including how much we pay for content, the ads and brands we see.

This is because two highly influential tech companies, Apple and Google, offer privacy protections that prevent marketers from accessing our data when they show us ads. The changes have major repercussions for online advertising, a business foundation for free apps and websites that many of us use, such as Facebook, TikTok, and the Weather Channel. These sites and apps now have to find new ways to show ads or make money.

Here’s what this means for you.

What is happening?

For decades, advertisers have relied on “cookies”, which are bits of code embedded in web browsers that can track our personal web browsing, to track us online and show us relevant ads. When smartphones came along, marketers also used trackers inside mobile apps to follow people between apps and websites.

These advertising technologies have become incredibly powerful and effective – if you bought shoes, shoe ads would follow you online – but with major drawbacks. It allowed marketers to create hyper-realistic profiles that were virtually anonymous. It also opened doors for bad actors to steal people’s data and spread misinformation.

The widespread concern about online privacy in recent years has sparked an industry-wide debate about what to do about this tracking. Apple and Google stepped in with different solutions.

What are Apple and Google doing?

In 2017, Apple released a version of the Safari web browser, which prevented the technology used by marketing companies from tracking people from site to site. This year Apple also released Application Monitoring TransparencyA popup in iPhone apps that gives people the option to not be tracked between apps and websites.

In 2019, Google announced Privacy Sandbox, a set of ideas for developing a more private web. The company plans to block the Chrome web browser from tracking cookies in 2023 in favor of a new system for advertisers to target us with ads.

This system may be a so-called Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLOC. It involves grouping people according to their interests. If you visit websites about tennis and dogs, you may belong to a group of people who share these interests. As soon as a website loads, it scans the browser for an identification code to see which group you belong to. The website can then decide what kind of ads to show your group.

In theory, this would be less invasive than today’s tracking methods because advertisers won’t have access to a cookie containing your personal browsing history.

Because of the wide reach of Apple’s and Google’s products – Google’s Chrome browser is #1 in the world and Apple’s iPhone is the best-selling phone – advertisers have no choice but to adapt. Now they need to find new ways to show us ads using less of our data. Some companies that rely on digital ads to appeal to people, such as small online publications, may not survive.

So what will the internet look like?

In the near term, digital ads will look different.

In the longer run, the internet you see when using Apple products may look different than what you see when using Google products.

Let’s start with Apple. In the past, if you’ve opened a free iPhone weather app, it may have used tracking technology to look at what you’re doing on other apps and websites. The app then presents an ad for something special to you, like a restaurant where you’ve previously ordered takeout.

But since this tracking can now be blocked, the weather app must rely on other data to serve an ad. This can be contextual information such as the time of day. As a result, the ads you see may be less relevant and more random.

With Google, if the company adopts the FLOC system, it will also change the nature of the ads you see.

Today, when you use the Chrome browser to click on a pair of Nike sneakers, you’re likely to see an ad for that shoe that follows you from site to site and app to app. In the future, a website won’t know that you’re looking at those sneakers, but it will know that you’re in a group that is interested in shoes. This means you may see ads for other sneakers, even if they aren’t for that particular sneaker.

Brendan Eich, founder of Brave, a private web browser, said Apple and Google’s changing approaches could lead to web publishers choosing sides. If publishers are happy with Google’s advertising solution, they can design their website to work well in Google’s browser, not Apple’s browser.

Mr Eich said this could result in a “fragmentation” of the web where people see different versions of the internet depending on the browsers they use.

What else does Apple’s internet version mean to me?

The good news is that you will have more privacy online due to Apple’s changes.

But there is a trade-off. As a result, many online products and services can cost more.

Small brands today can spend a modest amount to target specific customers with ads on different websites and apps. But since this type of tracking can now be blocked on Apple devices, small companies may have to choose big brands like Facebook, Google and Etsy and advertise on each of these platforms.

In other words, businesses may be forced to spend more promoting their products across multiple properties. These high costs will be passed on to you later on and lead to price increases.

This is already happening. Chantal Ebanks, owner of online beauty shop Bella Chauni, said that after Apple’s new ad blocking took effect, digital promotions on Facebook’s ad network are no longer reaching as many customers as they used to. As a result, its sales fell from thousands of dollars a month to hundreds of dollars. To make up for this, Ms. Ebanks has increased the price of a popular hair care product from $9.99 to $13.98 and is testing ads on other platforms like Pinterest.

Eric Seufert, a marketing strategist, predicted that more iPhone apps will move away from trying to monetize ads. He said they will start charging people for subscriptions or extras inside the apps.

The transition to subscriptions has been around for a while, but is expected to accelerate. Between 2017 and 2020, the proportion of top video games offering subscriptions on Apple’s US App Store increased to 18 percent More than 11 percent, according to a study by SensorTower, a mobile app research firm.

What else do Google’s changes mean to me?

Users will continue to see targeted ads as Google tries to reinvent rather than eliminate ad targeting altogether. Security experts said the advertising methods suggested by the company could also create new problems.

advertisers Combine people’s FLOC IDs with other information to continue locating themsaid Eric Rescorla, chief technology officer of Mozilla, which makes the Firefox web browser.

Bennett Cyphers, a technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization, said the system can place vulnerable people in groups where they are disproportionately targeted by abusive ads. For example, those with a lower income may fall into a group that receives advertisements for payday loans and cryptocurrency scams, he said.

Google said it was one of many offerings FLOC has tested. Ben Galbraith, director of product management for Google’s Chrome browser, said that simply blocking cookies will have worse privacy consequences because advertisers will find more invasive ways to track people.

The company also said it has mechanisms to prevent people from segregating into vulnerable groups and that FLOC IDs will change every seven days to prevent them from being tracked.