


What was new about that idea was that it was automated. At the time, Adsense was entirely contextual: The publisher would plant a bit of code on their site, and Google's bots would choose ads that matched the content of each page. I was one of the first Google Adsense publishers. Fully-automated targeted advertising that respects visitor privacy is in fact possible and ironically, it was Google who invented it. But there are no good solutions, the fundamental premise of a “privacy-centric” web that’s built around trackers and data brokers is a nonsense. The reality is that Google can’t back down-it must meet the needs of advertisers or its machine stops feeding.
