▪ Cookies have enabled advertisers to access highly accurate and detailed information about their audiences and shown how to target them, particularly through third-party cookies. However, there has been growing concern about the way thirdparty cookies are used to collect private data alongside how accessible that data is to advertisers. As such, governments globally introduced new policies to restrict data collection by advertisers such as GDPR in Europe and CCPA in the US 

▪ In response to this, advertising technology firms have looked to find alternative technologies. As one of the dominant players in the market, Google launched its “Privacy Sandbox” initiative to create new digital advertising tools that respect privacy better than cookies, yet enable an ad-supported web. Advances in machine learning and AI have enabled a number of other technologies, such as contextual advertising, direct sales and digital fingerprinting, to also gain traction 

▪ Contextual advertising is not a new concept but it became significantly less relevant as a method of targeting customers due to the hyper-accurate targeting that the introduction of third-party cookies has made possible. Contextual advertising is the targeted placing of ads based on the page content i.e. the environment the user is in rather than their behaviour