The problem is this would be admitting that the big lie (user targeting produces relevant more effective ads) is a big lie. User targeting destroys the social

The problem is this would be admitting that the big lie (user targeting produces relevant more effective ads) is a big lie. User targeting destroys the social fear of missing out mechanic -- nobody believes advertising affects them, but everyone believes that advertising affects the other guy. I have to pay attention to untargeted ads because anything they claim is something "everyone knows", even if it's a lie. But once retargeting pulls back the curtain on the wizard the user realizes that the ads they're seeing are individually selected just for them. Digital ads drop from (pretending to be) a primary cultural information source to the equivalent of a pushy door-to-door salesman, individually lying to you. But if you admit that all user targeting does is goose vanity metrics while damaging the value the ad inventory generates, most of the jobs in the digital ads industry evaporate overnight -- including most of the ad-adjacent staff at both the publishers and the brands -- so everyone is incentivized to keep the charade up.