The GDPR seems to be doing it's job

A lot of doomsday prediction has been going on around the EU's new data protection law, including that half of the web will disappear.

There are a few websites that have closed themselves against EU IPs, because they could not figure out how to make a website that does not spy on you.
Others have special eu.domain.com versions of their website - without ads (like USA today - compare the speed without all those scripts and trackers!)

Suddenly there is so much white space in the web!

edit:

They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds, from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than 500 requests to 34.

Why without ads?

Because today most ad spaces are not sold by e.g. The Washington Post but by 3rd party platforms that sit between the Post and the ad buyer - and don't care a lot about the quality of the ad.

This is also the reason why so many ads not only track your behavor without your consent, but also why so many ads include malware.

Anyway, for the time being (until the websites figure out how to pressure the viewers into accepting the spy terms or how to go around the law), the bought ads have decreased by 25%-40%.

It also looks like google was sure to lobby the law away in the last minute, and now has not finished adopting to it.

Google contacted DoubleClick Bid Manager clients over the last few days to warn them that until it has completed its integration into the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe and IAB Tech Lab’s GDPR Transparency & Consent Framework that publishers, ad tech vendor partners and advertisers should expect a “short-term disruption” in the delivery of their DoubleClick Bid Manager campaigns on third-party European inventory, starting May 25.

Of course, firms that want to advertise could just use non-privacy stealing banners without tracking and nobody would have to consent to anything.
But that would mean that company X is no longer able to show you ads all around the web telling you to buy a dishwater from X two hours after you have bought a dishwasher on X's online-shop.