Anecdotally, I've seen in the past with both Google and Apple Search Ads that a large portion of the spend is paying for taps that you would have gotten organic

Anecdotally, I've seen in the past with both Google and Apple Search Ads that a large portion of the spend is paying for taps that you would have gotten organically anyway. When you start using these tools, they almost seem to replace what would have been an organic acquisition with a paid acquisition. As the article notes, why isn't this obvious for most large advertisers on these platforms? Likely due to: - Their spend is so large that it hides the fact that they would have gotten a large % of it for free anyway - Large advertisers rarely stop all advertising for a period of time to notice the % of truely organic traffic (that isn't just opportunistically attributed to the platforms) - They have been doing it for so long that big spends on these platforms are considered mandatory and not even questioned