[beardyw]

Whilst I broadly agree, ads have been targeted to location for a long time. Newspapers and TV would have geographical editions so you don't advertise say your theatre production to people who are too far away to care. With billboards or earlier fliers, you did the same.

[grishka]

Of course. Also TV ads would usually be shown during programs that the advertiser's target audience is most likely to be watching. Like ads for toys between cartoons. That's all fine, you can do the same on the internet without harming anyone's privacy. As an advertising network, you can receive the topic information from the websites themselves as part of them signing up, and users' approximate location can be derived from the IP address.

But instead, they're all hellbent on doing some form of personalization (via tracking) and attribution, and act as if the world would end if all technical means to do that, like third-party cookies, would cease to exist.