But these days, marketing has gone digital and it sells more than the old way of just TV adverts, so it is not always about targeting the right audience again but propagating it wide and far to millions of people if not billions regardless of whether or not they need it. It is now left to them to patronise the product/service or not, but the truth remains that such an approach will reach more people and will even convert a lot who may not be part of those who were initially interested in the product or service.
That's what adverts do these days and more reason why it's an outdated disposition to limit it to the audience. However, one must ensure that the right marketing channels are used, those are the channels with organic people and not the many fake ones we have on the internet, who continues to use bots or uninterested people by using tasks-for-incentives just to prove they are working.
I'm happy I found someone who thinks like me about targeted audience. I also think that it's not necessary all the time. It definitely depends on the product but I have seen in marketing teams that they try to target every product to their target audience and I find it very wrong in most cases because the product is universal and might gain attention of someone out of their targeted audience. There are universal things like AirPods for example. It's not necessary to create an advertisement targeted on musicians, AirPods are something that absolutely every human might buy. In cases when someone promotes product like AirPods, I think it's better to have a wider audience, i.e. include everyone in your advertisement instead of targeting specifically musicians or people who listen to music.