https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency...
IMO, untargeted random ads are just spam because they aren't relevant. It's like the crap on the back of a shopping receipt...
Google wants you to believe advertisers need all the data collection because it's Google's sole value proposition. If people realize Google Ads is basically a sham... there goes Google's entire revenue stream.
This is a company which fires researchers for publishing the wrong scientific results, probably discard any claim they make based on "their data" after Timnit.
Topics will just be another datapoint. A respectable ad agency will still try to collect as much information about you as possible.
Next up, integration with your operating system.
If forced to watch ads, I'd take untargeted ones any day.
So targeted ads aren’t necessary, they are just more profitable.
"Untargeted" isn't the same as "contextual".
If you step back, it makes sense that contextual ads perform favorably vs. run of site or even retargeted (especially since retargeting, by the time it picks up on what you searched for, mostly shows you what you already bought thus no longer need).
> “The fact that we are no longer offering behavioral targeting options in Europe does not seem to be in the way of what advertisers want to do with us,” he said. “The desirability of a brand may be stronger than the targeting capabilities. We have not been impacted from a revenue standpoint, and, on the contrary, our digital advertising business continues to grow nicely.”
which was more or less that switching didn't make revenue drop, and it was still growing over time. They didn't see some magic bump from switching to contextual ads.
If they did, you'd of course wonder why they haven't proactively switched US ads to contextual.
“By identifying connections between content and emotion, we've successfully driven ad engagement 6X more effectively than IAB benchmarks.”