https://stratechery.com/2019/the-buzzfeed-lesson/

Good find.

QuoteThe shift from paper to digital meant publications could now reach every person on earth (not just their geographic area), and starting a new publication was vastly easier and cheaper than before...The increase in competition destroyed the monopoly, but it was the divorce of "readers" from "potential customers" that prevented even the largest publishers from profiting much from the massive amounts of new traffic they were receiving. After all, advertisers don't really care about readers; they care about identifying, reaching, and converting potential customers. And, by extension, this meant that differentiating ad inventory depended less on volume and much more on the degree to which a particular ad offered superior targeting, a superior format, or superior tracking.

Good read. Especially the last section