Comment by xvector
5 days ago
How do you expect small businesses to acquire customers? Spending tens of millions of dollars competing in generalized ad space to reach the same audience they can reach today with $1000?
Most small businesses that exist today would become nonviable overnight, and that is a huge chunk of the economy. Sure, you can say "they shouldn't have the right to exist" because they use targeted ads, but I have yet to hear a solid argument for why such ads are an infringement on our fundamental rights such that the whole SMB segment of the economy is worth destroying.
Do you seriously think that ? My experience is so dissociated that I think it unbelievable. I don't remember ever seeing an ad for a small business on the web, even less discovered one through them.
I discovered most small businesses that I use through word of month, seeing them while traveling or active search through google or google maps. The ones that I may have discovered through ad where through local physical add such as any box fliers or fliers/posters in other local businesses.
in order for to see small business ads you really have to have your browser fully exposed in order to be targeted - small business are local and feeding ads for a massage parlour in sam diego to me 3,000 miles away is not a good allocation of marketing money. I am 50 and have never, not once discovered a small business through an online ad
Let me guess, there were no small businesses in the whole world before the advent of digital automated targeted ads?
More like targeted ads enabled hundreds of thousands of small businesses to exist.