Ethical alternatives to advertisements for promoting a product or a service?
We all hate ads, primarily because it is an unethical usage of our data for profits. So, if a person does not want to pay companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft, what alternatives are there to advertise or promote a product or service?
Sure, there are options like posting on online forums, groups and email marketing, but the results do not come anywhere close when compared to paid ads. Are there privacy respecting companies that provides ad placement services? DuckDuckGo uses Microsoft ads, Mojeek didn't reply and Qwant isn't available in my country.
Say, I provide a service to a specific type/group of people, what is the most efficient and ethical, and least annoying way to reach them? Say, I own a restaurant or something. How do I attract more customers? I am willing to pay, but to not data-hungry companies.
If you have any existing users, you could offer them referral codes with some bonus if they get other people to sign up for your service. This, however, runs the risk that they pester all their friends and family and make them all hate you.
Search ads are targeted based principally on the query terms that the user just voluntarily gave to the search engine, not on retained personal data. If the user has literally just searched for "fish tanks", it's probably okay to try to sell them a fish tank.
Maybe it's just me, but I associate search engine ads with scams because of how often I see scams there. Of I have a tech issue and google the problem, the "we'll clean your PC for you" ads are sketchy. So if I saw a restaurant there, I might associate it with that.