[Atsuii]

I think this is missing a lot of nuances of digital advertising and the environment that business now operate in. The two major types of ads that used to exist were local and brand. Local is pointless for vast majority of today's digital businesses. Brand is very expensive from both a production and spend perspective, it is only suitable for already large businesses, there is also a lot of research that suggest it is very ineffective in actually generating sales for B2C.

Third option was to take out ads in a specialist publication to reach an audience that would mostly be aligned with your product (ie. business that makes chess boards taking out an ad in a chess magazine). This is probably the closest equivalent of targeted advertising today.

The barrier to entry for retail has dropped ridiculously with Shopify, allowing for niche and specialised retailers in a way that was previously not feasible. Acquiring new customers is still the hardest thing for a business to do, always has been and always will be, without the ability to reach new customers and connect with the audience who is interested in the businesses niche that is all dead in the water.