Sure, there are niche categories that would be hard to get. But for your two specific examples you could use those simple sets of criteria:

1. Target specific articles with advice for older runners in running publications. 2. Target Italian recipes in cooking websites only for users located in Denver.

You don’t need to do those things manually, it can be automated. Sure, it might not deliver the scale that FB and Google are promising, but to say that it’s impossible to do contextually is not accurate.

Use Google Search ads to capture all direct intent.

> 1. Target specific articles with advice for older runners in running publications.

Who reads running publications these days? Unless you meant online blogs etc, in which case:

> 2. Target Italian recipes in cooking websites only for users located in Denver.

That is targeted advertising, IIUC. You are targeting users based on their geolocation, which should be banned as per the article.

Also this would be more expensive in both time and cost