That's still possible with static ads. The server can simply lookup your country from your IP address and serve the relevant ad, without tracking you at all.
We fully control and host our static ads and try to keep them high quality, so I've decided that minimally using IP to loosely serve a more relevant ad is okay. MaxMind offers a downloadable Geo IP database that we use to do this and are not needing a 3rd party service for this.
The upside for the user is that location and whatever the one site is able to determine about the user is all that can be shared. If the user hasn't logged in with their real name - that probably isn't much.
So instead of one ad being enough to pay for your content, you have to fill your website with banner ads, embedded ads, scroll over ads, animated ads, etc etc.
It's a slippery slope, more people use adblockers causing content creators to add more advertisements to generate the same amount of income. More people are bothered by the increase in ads, and download adblockers themselves. Rinse and repeat until ad supported content is unrealistic for all but the biggest of websites.
And I'm pretty sure even checking location is controversial. I've at least seen it included as part of tracking in the past.
I don't have cable, either, but I do have a pair of rabbit ears to keep up with local news via OTA broadcasts.
The flip-side of this is that I’ve noticed that YouTube shows me PSAs from my own municipal government (“there’s an election soon” ads, “we’re building a new piece of civil infrastructure” ads, etc.) I actually kind of like that; I don’t have cable, so it’s not like I would see them anywhere else.
The entirely-static ads model does work when the consumption of the media is entwined with the consumption of the advertised brands, though. For example, a podcast can certainly advertise its own tour, since—given that you’re listening to the podcast—you likely want to see the podcaster speak in person, even if you can’t make it there.
Or, of course, if a (global) website is just advertising another (global) website. The NYT can advertise Amazon just fine.