Advertisers have been doing this as long as there have been advertisers. One that really blows some people's mind (although it's reasonably well-known by now) i

Advertisers have been doing this as long as there have been advertisers. One that really blows some people's mind (although it's reasonably well-known by now) is that although hardly anyone thinks twice about a diamond engagement ring, the notion we have of diamond rings today was invented by advertisers in the 1940s: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how-an-ad-campaign-invented-the-diamond-engagement-ring/385376/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho... Similarly, Americans will ask for a Kleenex even when they don't actually mean a Kleenex-brand tissue. I didn't even think twice about this until I moved to Europe and it was pointed out how weird that was. It's true the big tech companies make it easier to target segments of people by collecting data, but pervasive mass manipulation is hardly new or unique to big tech companies and generally it doesn't need nearly the amount of data that they collect. People are generally similar enough to each other psychologically that you can paint with broad strokes like demographics and still hit most of your target (and interestingly, some of the most viral memes have no particularly targeted message).