Spending 5 minutes in Biteable [1] or a similar service would kick out much better ad creative that would likely have yielded substantially better results.
Another point of contention is around the revenue model. Sure you could pay 4x to drive initial growth, but if you keep those customers longer than a month, the LTV could outpace the CAC.
Finally, all those efforts work together. Spend $20K on google ads and referrals will go up, you can test conversion funnels since you have traffic, back links will appear that will help your organic SEO in the long term, audiences for retargeting on Facebook will fill up, etc.
However, the conclusion of the author is one I agree with in the long term. Tech will solve for this. Hololens and Quest are close, the next generation will probably solve it across multiple platforms.
[1] I work for Biteable.