First, you’re talking about advertising, not marketing. Also this all might have been true 15 years ago. But these days you aren’t likely to see a startup with under $50million in funding (so, 99% of startups) do TV ads and OOH and event sponsorships.

Those are “brand” advertising techniques still popular among legacy CPG brands who are stuck in the old world. Those are the campaigns with no exact way to measure returns other than educated guesses.

Any properly run startup today is focusing the majority of ad spend on “direct response,” or direct sales ie. Facebook ads, google AdWords, etc. or actual human sales teams.

This spending is 100% measurable so any company paying more to acquire customers than the customer’s exact LTV is simply dumb or trying some nefarious loss leader strategy.

Facebook and Google sit at the top of S&P 500 right now because their ad networks are so measurable and perfectly targeted.

There is no problem with a lack of visible returns on Facebook or google ad spend.