Contextual advertising is back, and it works.
The data case for matching ads to pages, not to users. What changes when you stop profiling people.
Behavioural targeting was sold as precision. In practice it delivered a leaky pipe of personal data, frustrated users, and diminishing returns once privacy laws and browser restrictions took hold. Contextual targeting, done well, outperforms it on the metrics advertisers actually care about.
The hidden cost of profiles
Building a profile of a user takes data from dozens of sources, most of which the user never knowingly agreed to. The data is often stale, often wrong, and almost always less useful than the page the user is reading right now.
What contextual actually means
Serve an ad for hiking boots on an article about trail running. The context is the signal. No profile, no tracking cookie, no identity resolution graph, no auction. Just a good match.
