Yeah, but internet advertising fetishizes "personalization" and quantitative metrics, which are predicated on invasions of privacy. Advertisers could put those toys down, and go back to more traditional, privacy-preserving advertising, but I don't think they have the maturity and willpower to do so on their own.
Can be done... rates would have to go down below TV to work and even so will be attractive only for big advertizers (think billions in sales).. Smaller advertisers would have no interest in the medium without targeting
Mozilla attempted this on the Firefox home page. Nobody understood the point (partly Mozilla's fault for poor messaging) and it was roundly criticized for putting advertising in the browser, instead of providing a solution to funding websites without violating privacy.
It's not working very well. How much more data do they need to collect before it starts working?
When you see an ad that's too tailored most people just get scared anyway.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I've seen relevant ads beside search results on Google, but that doesn't really take a lot of magic to figure out that when I search for "Aeropress", I'm interested in coffee.
Ads in podcasts have been somewhat effective as well. I use Blue Apron, I like Audible, I've checked out Squarespace, I bought a Casper dog bed. AFAIK, none of the podcasts know anything about me, but they do know generally who their audience is.
And even with all that, the most of the targeted ads aren't any more compelling than content-based "spray and pay."
IMHO, targeted ads are pointless unless they're a targeted to a search query.