Without third-party tracking advertisers buy specific audiences, so a bike helmet seller would buy ads in some outdoor magazine sites and ride-tracking apps. Th

Without third-party tracking advertisers buy specific audiences, so a bike helmet seller would buy ads in some outdoor magazine sites and ride-tracking apps. The incentive to pester the user with the same ad is minimal. With third-party tracking and retargeting that same advertiser just buys access to the same user via an agency which would pester the user with retargeted ads throughout their network in hopes that at some point, after X amount of views, the user will feel inclined to perform the monetizeable action (e.g. finally click on that abandoned cart and purchase the bike helmet). In this system each property on the network is relegated to showing as many ads as possible, since each ad is essentially a lottery ticket. You might resurrect the cart and finally buy that bike helmet on nytimes, instagram, Angry Birds - whoever commands your attention at that moment. Companies who complaint about Apple tend to hold a vast amount of such lottery tickets. Companies that do not, tend to have access to specific monetizeable audiences they can sell access to.