That's still a huge difference. Previously ads would be people who read x, people who go to y, here's a shoe that you might like because people who read wsj wear loafers, here's a hair product you like because people who read seventeen magazine are generally seventeen. The ad wouldn't know anything about you, just what the readers of where the ad is placed might be into based on past advertising decisions, and the content of whatever they are reading.

Now the game has been turned. Advertisers don't need to target sports illustrated to sell gatorade. They can see you checked into LA Fitness and most of the people who checked into this particular LA fitness also happened to spend 30s longer looking at a tester gatorade ad, so there is a slim possibility that you too will look at a gatorade ad for 30s and maybe subliminally engage with it next time you are presented with a gatorade in a cooler at the grocery store. The classic is you looking at a product on amazon and seeing it appear all over the web. It only gets more insidious the deeper your digital footprint goes, the more data they have on you, the more correlations they are free to make which would have been impossible back when advertisers were catering to audiences, not individuals. Sprinkle in exploiting modern psychology for profit, and it's disturbing.

Yes, and it's shitty for consumers and publishers as well. Before if I was interested in a niche product, there would be publications that were supported by ads from the niche industry. Now, they can figure out that I am interested in fountain pens from my browsing history, and instead of paying someone to write fountain pen content for me to read, they put the ads on any random website that I happen to visit. This means that now niche publishing is unviable because it doesn't have a high level of traffic and it also can't deliver more highly targeted ads than e.g. Facebook.

The clearest example of this is the collapse of local news.

Yes. Do you know how commercial printing works? The newspaper is not targeting individuals.

They could be if they wanted to. My address is printed on the cover of some of my magazines - so the capability of person-specific printing exists it's just a matter of extending this to the ads too.

Realistically, I wouldn't expect targeting more granular than a zip code. But that's still pretty decent as far as advertisement targeting goes. Definitely better than broadcast radio, as one example.

Lol, you got me, they can put a sticker on magazines, so there's no difference between print and online advertising.