the organizing principle of digital advertising, which is the individual consumer. What Facebook — now Meta — is better at than anyone in the world is understanding consumers not as members of a cohort or demographic group but rather as individuals, and serving them ads that are uniquely interesting to them.

brands are created for cohorts or demographic groups, because they need to be manufactured at scale;

thus the opportunity for an entirely new wave of companies that were built around digital advertising and its deep personalization from the get-go.

from Ben Thompson