The products that I care about actually do offer personalized ads without tracking: think podcasts (not from major networks, but podcasts like ATP or Relay FM), blogs (like Daring fireball), and YouTubers in an area of interest I have (MKBHD, Linus Tech Tips). I don't even mind sponsored content from these people because more often than not, the products are sensible, tailored to my interests, and actually appealing. Yet zero optimization or learning went into it outside of understanding what the source material is and marketing against that.
Obviously you have a bigger problem when it comes to larger sites like NY Times, but why not just let me say "hey, show me tech products because I like tech" to personalize, rather than trying to infer what I want and get it wrong? I'd be more than happy to tell every ad network ever what I actually care about, but right now all of the optimization is focused on guessing what I care about instead.
Podcasts should be the gold standard for online advertising. They're perfect for everyone involved: there's no creepy tracking involved, and the ads are appealing because podcast producers tend to know and respect their audience. I never skip podcast ads because they're often entertaining in and of themselves (e.g., Reply All).
I like this sort of "personalization" podcasts do in their ads: with human judgment where the content creators exercise editorial control, not some black box chum box any rando can dump ads into.
They're not perfect for everyone. It's usually a huge blackbox for advertisers who don't know what they are getting until they've dipped 50-100k into it and tracked the resulting conversions later in the funnel.
Obviously you have a bigger problem when it comes to larger sites like NY Times, but why not just let me say "hey, show me tech products because I like tech" to personalize, rather than trying to infer what I want and get it wrong? I'd be more than happy to tell every ad network ever what I actually care about, but right now all of the optimization is focused on guessing what I care about instead.