[idle_zealot]

> if you sell Warhammer paraphernalia, you can buy ads to be shown only to people who have searched for Warhammer related words, rather than "everyone in Wisconsin".

Tracking people and shoving your wares in their faces is not the only way to reach interested parties. You could go to a Warhammer convention, join a Warhammer forum and offer to send members samples, or just post images of your stuff in a sharing thread, whatever. Engage with people while they're searching for the thing you're offering.

[account42]

Yes and you also don't need to reach all your customers directly. If you make a good product word of it will spread naturally. Ads actually inhibit that by taking over people's attention and pre-empting any interested customers from finding you by showing them your competitors first. So you end up paying for the reach that the advertisement industry took away from you in the first place.

Of course, word of mouth requires you to actually make a good product whereas with advertisment it's enough if your product looks good.

[BurningFrog]

You're making a theoretical argument about how things could work.

I'm telling you what actually happened in the real world.