Facebook: Free as in Bullshit

This is a good point:

If only anyone could remember a time when advertising wasn't based on privacy-invasive tracking, we could know whether there were any successful small businesses back then.

Pre-internet, would I have bothered advertising as a small business? Probably not, but my location and product would have had to have been right for it to work at all. Pre targeted ads, it was probably a bit more of a hit and hope approach. I've said it before, Google had advertising working really well with AdSense all those years ago when it created adverts related to the content is was being displayed alongside.

You definitely get more bang for your buck with targeted ads, but it's not something anyone should be comfortable with.