You’ve clearly never worked in direct response marketing. The cost of customer acquisition vs lifetime value of a customer is terrible compared to traditional retail. In 2007, you could print money. In 2023, you’re most likely barely breaking even buying digital ads. The OPs thesis is quite correct. I’ve been in the space for 14 years and have tens of millions, if not hundreds, in DR adspend across multiple platforms / industries.
I've been in the direct response industry as well for a while and kind of at a loss for what to do.
Being a small time app developer and seller of random things. I can't afford these new CPMs, $15 - $50 is a LONG shot compared to 2019 and paying $3-5 CPM.
Mind you I've spent close to $400k between Fb/Snapchat/Tiktok.
What do I do now that these companies have shut me out? Anything I build I can't see a path forward on acquiring customers without say buying email lists or hitting SMS lists. I feel very unfairly screwed.
How about you spend 10 minutes looking at what Apple is actually doing and realize they are just as if not more "privacy hostile" as Facebook/Google/etc. They've been on a hiring spree since they announced their "privacy" update in 2020 to build out their own Ad Tech/DSP/Self Service Ad Platform.
Yeah - Apple was pulling a monopolistic move and kneecapping their competition for profits sake. They realized "Hey, we can kneecap these guys and in the near future profit billions like they did with our own ad network".
How is this good for privacy?