Likely more related to several trends including the announcement about Chrome getting rid of cookies in a couple years, increased privacy legislation and risk,

Likely more related to several trends including the announcement about Chrome getting rid of cookies in a couple years, increased privacy legislation and risk, and desire to extricate themselves from a low-leverage relationship with big platforms like Google and Facebook. This also likely dovetails with a bet around improved UX leading to subscription growth, which is a much healthier business model for them that better aligns them with their readers. I see other publishers looking to go this route in the future if they can pull it off. Particularly privacy-focused ones that have mechanisms for aggregating 1st party data and turning it into valuable targeting segments.