[cratermoon]

I used to work in adtech. My position then, as now:

1. targeted ad buys are mostly a scam. Research shows that they are barely more effective than old-fashioned contextual ads.

2. Contextual ads, aka "dumb" ads, the kind that show ads based on the content they are displayed with, are fine.

3. adtech companies depend on advertisers not understanding (1) and publishers chasing dollars by signing up with ad targeting networks.

The ones that are actually making money are the ad networks, and it is in their interest to spread FUD about (1) and not offer (2), as they make their money as a percentage of every ad sale (auction) transaction, and the CPM is higher on targeted ads because of ignorance of (1)