I feel there may be a better market like roody15 has said for contextual analysis of websites and provide adverts based on that. Enhanced with Anon user traffic and buy paths. Which could slowly overtake if done well.
Also on the effectiveness: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/16/facebook-lured-advert... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18234626
Then if you cross reference this with how procurement works, bullshit jobs and similar (can't find that article) starts to make some sense.
Though there may be arguments such as manipulation as to why the focus is on the advert personalisation and not the nefarious things that can come out of it. Think McCarthy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Blacklists
Regardless of your persuasion consider if the other side gets in and you end up on the black list.
'I don't mind adverts tracking me' vs 'I can't get a job because of X opinion'
But yeah, show someone on a blog about new GPUs an ad to buy a GPU and there’s an uptick. Turns out some of those people do want to buy GPUs.
Showing me an ad for GPUs on the YouTube page for cat videos because I visited that blog previously is weird.
Like a friend going, “so looking at these cats reminds me — do you want my friend Dave’s GPU?”
We have several near-trillion-dollar companies that basically have no viable business model other than doubling down on targeted advertising. If third-party cookies get demonized or GDPR'd to death, they need to pivot to SOMETHING else that still fits into the same profiling paradigm.
I suspect it's not about results or innovation anymore, it's about being a moat. Only a trillion-dollar company with huge scale and scope can possibly build and maintain "high quality" profiles, so it's a great way to spread FUD against any competing, potentially actually privacy-first, ad-tech upstarts.
I'm sort of waiting for the "Emperor has no clothes" moment. We see the occasional "Brand stops advertising for 6 months and sales stay on trend" story, or the "our best conversions come from real content and relevant direct ads" story. We have the fact that ad spend grows and yet publishers starve, implying the middlemen are taking an ever-larger chunk of value out of the ecosystem in exchange for their services. It's gonna be ugly when the dots are joined.