I would have to assume they could track accesses to the RSS feed if they wanted to. And they could embed text-only ad messages.
The problem isn’t that these things became impossible, the “problem” for ad companies is they couldn’t do it in their preferred obnoxious, overdone, and intrusive style.
The problem isn’t that these things became impossible, the “problem” for ad companies is they couldn’t do it in their preferred obnoxious, overdone, and intrusive style.