Big Brother
For many years, marketing has leaned on platforms such as Google and Meta to reach new customers and re-target existing customers. By paying the piper (companies like these two, which exist primarily to sell ads and collect data from users), marketers can tick the boxes on what type of customer they want to reach, and let the internet do the rest.
In the early days of online advertising, this was highly successful for growing a business. Times have changed, however, and people have become more resistant to the constant bombardment of irrelevant ads.
Device security has also become more and more protective of personal data, which effectively muddies the water for targeted advertising. It’s also become much harder to target a specific group of people because of how many people are online.
While it might sound promising to have access to millions of potential customers, once you find out <1% of them would be interested in your business, an expensive ad campaign seems like money down the drain.