An anti-Israel org targeted me with an ad. It is a masterclass in the wrong ICP.

A business consultant. A Fractional CRO. A guy who spends most of his day helping companies improve sales, business development and revenue growth. A religious Jew...

Now before anyone turns this into a political discussion, that's not the point.

The point is that this ad perfectly demonstrates three business lessons I have been talking about for years.

The first is targeting the wrong ICP.

Think about what had to happen here. Facebook's algorithm looked at all the information it has about me and decided I was a relevant audience. At the same time, somebody at UNRWA approved a budget, defined an audience and paid money to put this ad in front of me.

Two different organizations looked at the same situation and came to the same conclusion. Both were wrong.

And if organizations with budgets measured in millions or billions can make this mistake, what makes you think your company is immune?

I see founders make exactly the same mistake all the time. They target users instead of buyers. They build content for people who will never purchase. They generate leads that look great in a dashboard but never become customers. Everybody stays busy, reports look positive and months later they wonder why revenue is not growing.

The second lesson is that the big players are not automatically smarter.

There is a tendency to assume that if a company is large enough, successful enough or has enough technology, it must know something the rest of us don't. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes Facebook serves this ad to me and reminds us that large organizations are perfectly capable of making the same basic mistakes as everyone else.

The third lesson is about waste.

Bad marketing is not just ineffective. It is expensive. Every impression shown to the wrong person costs money. Every click from someone who will never buy costs money. Every hour spent creating campaigns for the wrong audience costs money.

The scary part is that bad marketing often looks productive. Reports are generated. Metrics move. Meetings are held. Everyone feels like progress is being made.

Meanwhile, nothing happens.

No sale. No conversion. No business result.

So the next time your marketing isn't producing results, don't start by blaming the ad, the copy, the designer or the salesperson.

Start with a much simpler question: Are we talking to the right people?

Because if both Facebook and the advertiser can get that wrong, there is a decent chance you should double-check your own assumptions too.