The task of "making a consumer aware that a product exists that they would be interested in purchasing" can be valuable to the consumer. The problem is that sin

The task of "making a consumer aware that a product exists that they would be interested in purchasing" can be valuable to the consumer. The problem is that since it's a task currently being performed by the sellers of specific products, their incentives are not aligned with those of the consumer. So you get the current nauseating mess of creepy targeting or scattershot non-targeting, and it gets thrown in your face in passing, instead of at a time and in a way that you've chosen. Pay-to-get-attention could in theory still be a meritocracy where good products make money and thus can pay to get advertised more - but in practice it's more a matter of who raises the most money from investors, or incumbents using their past success to out-market the scrappy newcomers with a better product but smaller war-chest. I think there's still a big opportunity here, in creating marketplaces or similar that are closer to true meritocracies, where the best products get recommended, that put the wants and needs of the consumer first, where avoiding "noise" and "false positives" from the perspective of the consumer is a top priority. The problem is that the obvious monetization of something like this is to start compromising the integrity and trust you've built up and amplify those willing to pay, and we end up back where we started, with yet another Google, Facebook, Yelp, Trustpilot or similar.