It has never been a thing, that's why. Adverts have been targeted for decades before the internet existed at all. Do you think TV adverts are placed randomly?

It has never been a thing, that's why. Adverts have been targeted for decades before the internet existed at all. Do you think TV adverts are placed randomly? They aren't. Different times of day have different value to different advertisers. TV ads are targeted based on detailed knowledge of audience demographics. Do you think billboard ads are placed randomly? They aren't. Their placement is optimised based on the beliefs of the ad firms about who will drive past them or see them. Do you think internet ads were placed randomly before AdSense? No, they were targeted by rough demographic guessed from the sites content just like TV and billboard ads were. All that's changed on the internet is that targeted has got more precise and more sophisticated. But there's no bright line separating "generic" from "targeted" ads, like you imagine. And the better targeting is hardly an optional feature like the DPAs seem to imagine. It increases revenues which enables firms to provide new content and new features. Roll back the web to 1990s era ad techniques and now all the ads on generic sites like news or search with no clearly defined audience will be barrel-scraping "punch the monkey" animations, for those of us who remember that stuff.