Religious content material has lengthy been a mainstay on social media, the place Christian influencers can garner tens of millions of views. And a lot of the net response to Hallow’s TikTok adverts has been constructive. Still, Alex Jones, the chief govt of Hallow, stated he was conscious that some folks have been shocked to encounter the corporate’s adverts on social media.

“We do not set any sophisticated or specific targeting,” wrote Mr. Jones, who’s to not be confused with the conspiracy theorist of the identical identify who ran the Infowars web site. “Each platform has its own algorithm for determining its feed. We know that there are some comments from folks who are surprised to see these posts in their feed. We certainly don’t want to force anything on anyone.”

Jessi Hood, a library circulation coordinator in Roanoke, Va., who doesn’t take into account herself non secular, was one other one who stumbled on Mr. Wahlberg and Hallow on her For You web page on TikTok. “I kind of roll my eyes half the time when I see him,” Ms. Hood, 24, stated, noting the actor’s legal previous. (At 16, Mr. Wahlberg was convicted of assaulting a Vietnamese man and served 45 days in jail.)

Ms. Hood downloaded Hallow out of curiosity. “My first thought was just like, Oh, that is weird. This is an app that’s for prayers, and you have to pay for it?” she stated. She posted a couple of screenshots from Hallow on X after which deleted it from her cellphone.

In his e-mail, Mr. Jones, the Hallow govt, offered nameless quotations from purported Hallow customers glowing concerning the platform. For others who discover Hallow adverts on social media, there may be much less curiosity: “Opened tiktok to a video of Mark Wahlberg asking me to pray with him … and I cannot think of a thing I want to do less, actually,” Brandi Howard, 32, posted on X.

But provided that Mr. Schneider visited the Hallow web site and that Ms. Hood downloaded the app (solely to delete it), the TikTok marketing campaign appears to be piquing curiosity.