If you show an ad for a car that costs $100k to 1000 users and a single user buys it (0.1%) you still sold a car for $100k. Let's say it costs $90k to make it.

If you show an ad for a car that costs $100k to 1000 users and a single user buys it (0.1%) you still sold a car for $100k. Let's say it costs $90k to make it. You could pay $5 per ad displayed and still made a profit. My point is, the people who actually buy the products are actually paying for the other people who can't afford it. So, the model doesn't rely on everyone buying a keyring from a car dealership, but on most people not buying anything, and a couple buying a car. In a sense, that model is better at distributing income, because everyone gets a service and the people who can afford pay for everything. If everything was behind paywalls, people who can afford would have all the nice services and people who can't, will have nothing. What's interesting is that "targeted ads" is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of an ads ranking, where the user is shown the ads they are most likely to buy. However, from the point of view of the car dealership, when they think targeted ads, they would like their ads to be shown only to people who will likely buy the car. No company would want their ads shown to someone with no disposable income, yet, they will be shown some ad.