Arguably though that's just a level of indirection though, isn't it?

Ie, I assume most of the sites I visit track me for advertising purposes. This is no different than Google, it's just that with Google I expect the developers of the tracking to be Google directly. With the NewYorkTimes or w/e I don't expect them to be doing it. I expect some random 3rd party to be doing all the real tracking.

Now I know nothing about Exactis, but I'd wager (perhaps incorrectly) that their product is directly related to a product I was consuming, such as written news content or w/e.