Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk

The problem is that’s hard for everyone downstream. I used to sell stuff on Amazon and EBay from surplus auctions as a side hustle. Initially you could run a sustainable business with 20-30% gross margins. When I got out, you needed 60-70% margins.

So you really need to be selling a lifetime customer with value beyond the first sale, sell some bullshit story, or junk/scam/stolen product high margins.

That’s why drugstores get looted… people sell toothpaste on Amazon.

Not far into the piece, we get: > The point is that Jeremy's has to spend $800K/month to reach its customers, which means that it either has to accept $800K less in profits, or make it up by charging more and/or skimping on quality.

...what? Acquiring new customers for a business via advertising means less profits or lower quality? How does that follow?

I own an ecommerce business, and Facebook/Instagram ads are my main avenue of new customer acquisition (though to be clear I'm not in the ballpark of $800k/year). My products are somewhat seasonal, so I can only really profitably advertise from about April-September. The rest of the time, I'm just continuing to sell to existing customers.

During the April-September window, I make much more money, because I am selling to my existing customers and also selling to new customers via profitable advertising. The quality of my product does not decline during the time that I am advertising. My prices don't change during that period, either.

My company makes decidedly more money because I'm able to advertise. It doesn't cost me to lose profits; it causes me to gain them. Yes, if you look at my books, you'll see that advertising is a big red number, but if that's where you end your analysis, you just don't have a basic concept of how advertising works.

For all of the author's complains about "enshittification" (cute the first time, but beaten equine carcass style by the end) of products, this kind of targeted advertising is an enormous boon for small businesses that sell good products. I can't afford a TV ad campaign, and even if I could, I couldn't measure it enough for it to be useful, given that I'm trying to keep things tight and well-understood financially.

He complains about "ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar," but there is a reason for that! They are delivering a service that is valuable for businesses in an immediate and measurable way. The amount of market share the ad-tech companies get is proportional to the quality of the service they provide to advertisers relative to other media.

Now to be clear, I agree with much of what the author takes issue with in terms of data collection and the like. There are lots of privacy issues with Facebook, Google, etc. that should be taken seriously, and people should clearly understand what it is they're sharing and how it's used. But even with that in mind, the author is conflating his frustration with adtech and concern about privacy issues with the idea that they aren't delivering tremendous value to small businesses like mine, and that's just incorrect.

At least after a few days of effort Walmart did refund me and said they were investigating the vendor.