I think what's hard to deduce with advertising, especially for small projects or people who don't have much experience is the activation energy needed to see any results from what seem like relatively large ad spends.

To be clear, I suck at this. I've attempted to buy instagram / facebook ads and had little luck. For FaceBook ads you basically have to spend around $6k before the algorithm even starts to care about what you're doing. This is essentially because it has to first serve enough ads to figure out if people are actually clicking before actually targeting the demographic you set.

That said, as much as I hate it, I have no clue how to do social media marketing (TikTok or otherwise) and it's astonishing how much energy and time this takes. I used to joke that it'd be a better use of my time to find a college girl who likes TikTok and has a stimulant prescription to run social media for my bad side-project. (this is a joke)

However, targeted ads definitely work. I still get ads on instagram for the rapid-test clinic that just opened up across the street from my apartment. I can literally see the clinic from my window.