[hnbad]

This seems to be very much the case for behavioral ads as far as I can tell. At some point Google et al convinced everyone that tracking the user's every move across the Internet made for better conversions than just providing ads that are relevant to the content they appear alongside and everyone just nodded along. Given that we now know that Meta (née Facebook) blatantly lied about the effectiveness of video content (which single-handedly killed various news sites who made hard pivots based on these claims) I'm not convinced behavioral ads really do perform that much better. The biggest value add of Google ads was that it provided some safeguards against abuse and a reasonable expectation of safety and moderation.