Demand for different products is generated very differently depending on the product. Some things travel by word of mouth, some things don't.
The comment I was criticising claimed they were spending millions a month on FB & Insta only, which seems astronomical and raises some concerns about whether the product provides any value at all.
How? Spending on fb/insta is no different than print & tv. Air BnB ads are probably 5x as effective on FB than on a billboard, how does that say anything about their product?
Web ads, on the other hand...
I don’t see obvious scams, phishing or malware being advertised on TV or print, but I saw a lot of them back when I was on Facebook, and even reporting them didn’t do anything.
Most companies do paid marketing. I’d also suggest there are probably many things that you think of as general promotion (events, sponsorships, talks, community engagement, more) which are in fact brand marketing, and that for most companies brand marketing is an inefficient use of funds compared to performance marketing.
You seem to have a very misaligned thought on why advertising occurs and why it works, especially for a relative small timer like the poster (since a couple million is a drop in the bucket for IG/FB).
If I had to pay millions to shove my product in people’a faces because that’s the only way to get them to use it, I would reconsider whether my product should even exist.