[unshift]

Successful spammers are absolutely targeting their emails. It's similar to when you search for something on Amazon and then see ads for it on Facebook -- the goal is to put an ad in your inbox (essentially for free) instead of paying for ad impressions.

[elorant]

That’s programmatic advertising. It’s a different beast while very relevant to the context of being continually monitored/profiled. If there's such a thing as targeted spam I've yet to witness it.