Targetted advertising does not require the tracking of search patterns or individualized profiles.  That's not to say tracking is not occurring, but often it's not Google that is doing the tracking.  Those ads that follow you around from one site to another, and from one device to another are based on profiling by advertising firms, to whom Google only sells space.  I'm with you on using duckduckgo and Ad Blocker but wanted to make a couple of corrections.