[lastofthemojito]

> I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist?

Is this a serious question? You advertise. Just like people have been doing for generations. You advertise in publications or spaces that will attract people interested in your product or service. You're going to have to do more to convince me that we need individual level targeted for businesses to succeed.

We're not mad if the new bakery in town advertises in the town paper or sends postcards to everyone in the zipcode. We're not mad if the new geeky t-shirt website puts ads on geeky subreddits or Facebook groups. We're not mad if your new auto detailing service comes up if I Google "auto detailing <my city>". We're mad that those ads creepily follow us around the internet, reminding us of the scale of the enormous data collection that enables such behavior.

Don't tell me that bakeries or t-shirt shops or auto detailers can't thrive without targeted marketing. We've had those things for way longer than we've had targeted marketing.

[esperent]

> sends postcards to everyone in the zipcode.

I literally own a bakery and I would be mad at myself if I wasted that much paper.

I also don't even know if this town has a printed paper I could still advertise in. Maybe? But I'm unlikely to spend our extremely limited advertising budget there.

I also don't want to use invasively targeted online ads. I'd be totally satisfied for keyword based ads - like if someone goes on Maps and searches for "bakery", "coffee" etc. I think that's the best middle ground in the modern era.

I don't care if someone has a history of following baking related Facebook pages, searches for bakeries every day or for the first time ever. I understand that would make our ads more efficient but I'm willing to accept in exchange for respecting people's privacy. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way for me to make that happen - if I pay to advertise on Google Ads, which unfortunately is the best choice for us, then I have to let Google invade everyone's privacy. There's no setting that I am can find to disable targeted advertising for my campaign.

[BizarroLand]

Exactly. In an ideal world, you pay your ad fee, and everyone in a 30 mile radius who searches for bakery related terms would get information that you exist.

You wouldn't be popping up in the middle of someone's read of an article on fly fishing because someone else in that person's household searched for muffin recipes a week ago.

[MildRant]

> We've had those things for way longer than we've had targeted marketing.

You've had way less of those things as well. I'm not defending targeted marketing but you are ignoring that there are way more bakeries and t-shirt shops now than ever. As a small business, you aren't competing against other local t-shirt shops you are competing against every t-shirt shop that can setup a webpage and put a shirt in the mail.

[akira2501]

> You advertise in publications or spaces that will attract people interested in your product or service.

Are those publications most popular products, the online versions, selling advertising in the way their print only counterparts have? Or, are they just offering you targeting through their already extant advertising setup?

> Don't tell me that bakeries or t-shirt shops or auto detailers can't thrive without targeted marketing.

Local advertising and national advertising are two entirely different things and the campaigns even have two entirely different purposes and metrics for measurement.

One of the great forces of the internet was to allow me to do regular and successful business with niche operations that may not be local to me. It was supposed to expand upon the previously existing model. Adtech is trying to stand across this gap, which still hasn't been filled for anyone outside of a local goods retailer.