Exactly. If it didn’t pay off these companies wouldn’t keep shoveling money to Facebook and Google to show their ads time and time again. Marketing is expensive. If it didn’t at least break even then nobody would be doing it anymore by now. Obviously it works, otherwise I wouldn’t ever know what the fuck a squarespace or a goddamn raid shadow legends is.
I can see why you call it disingenuous but the point of the matter is that children are getting shot. You can break it down into as many catagories as you like, the bottom line is that far too many school aged children are dying violent deaths in a world that has enough knowledge and resources to know what the solutions are to prevent it. The only thing keeping that going at this point is political fuckery.