Unaided recall is the only position worth paying for
There is a difference between a household recognizing your name when they see it and producing it unprompted when somebody asks. The first is cheap and nearly worthless. The second decides who gets called, and in this metro it is already occupied in most categories.
No local budget buys unaided recall across thirteen counties. It is entirely achievable inside one audience, which is why the first decision in a Dallas program is what to give up rather than what to add.
The loudest advertisers share one weakness
A message built to run across the whole metroplex has to work equally well in Frisco and in Oak Cliff, so it ends up saying very little. Housing stock, ticket sizes, and the problems people actually have differ enormously between a 1940s bungalow and a 2019 build, and none of that can be addressed by an advertiser buying the whole market.
Specificity is the asymmetry available to a smaller operator. It costs nothing extra, it cannot be outspent, and it is the reason a narrow message beats a loud one inside a defined audience.
Displacement is cheapest at the point of friction
Nobody wakes up wanting to change providers. They change when something breaks: a bill goes up, a familiar technician stops coming, a job goes badly, or the company is absorbed into a larger group and starts behaving differently.
Those moments are unpredictable per household and constant in aggregate. That argues for continuous, cheap presence rather than campaign bursts, because the return comes from already being there when the crack appears.