targeted advertizing failures

[lechat]

Few months ago a buddy of mine suggested I check out an American politician debating the dangers of Islam and even though i didn't particularly give a shit either way I'm a polite guy and figured watching one youtube video on my mobile couldn't hurt..... big mistake.
Flash forward to a month later and me having to delete my search history because no matter how hard i tried i could not convince youtube's suggestions option that i didn't want to kick immigrants out of 'merica (I'm Australian), buy some machine guns and kill some black people.


So here are some of the biggest fails i've seen so far and why i am now terrified to search for anything even remotely off topic.

At one point i went searching for a way to tie shoe laces or a device to lock my laces in place. Turns out I'm now a triathlete who might want to buy a new 20 thousand dollar bike or some arm pit lube.

I play violin so now every second page i visit likes to suggest that maybe i would like to buy a cello.... I know some violinists also play the cello but you wouldn't suggest a trumpet to someone because they play guitar.
On the same note note i also get ads for my local string shop/luthier which might be good if it wasn't for the fact it is the only decent shop within a 10 hour drive so that's basically advertizing ice to eskimos.

I got a spam email from a clothing website and as i tend to get these from ebay purchases i tried to unsubscribe. turns out the unsubscribe option doesn't work so with some quick googleing it turns out it's another scam website so after politely giving all their listed email addresses to some mailing lists i now get targeted adverts for that exact site.

So fellow escapii how has advertizing failed you lately?

 

[dangoball]

Aww, I thought this is going to be about some hilariously misguided adverts. Consider me disappointed.
I don't really have much of a problem with add. I manage to filter them out even without add-block. I was kidna confused when Czech rap started showing up on my youtube recommendations, because I hardly ever listen to rap at all and never our local variation. Mystery solved when I found out my borhter didn't log out of my acc when he played a few songs. Just spammed youtube with pony searches until it stopped putting rap up.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I made the mistake of watching a pewdipie video for the first and final time. Youtube has certainly made sure I wont forget that.

 

[Pyrian]

When I was single on Facebook, I got tons of dating website ads. Then I got engaged, and they were all replaced by wedding products and services ads. Finally, I got married, and... Right back to dating website ads, lol.

 

[Parasondox]

That's why you use InPrivate or Incognito browsing. Like when a link has "Daily Mail" or "Mail Online" on it, I make sure I use incognito. I don't want Google suggesting Daily Mail content all the time. No. Damn. Way.

Oh, Ann Summers. You don't want ads about "power" rings and adult toys popping up on sites you visit a lot.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I'm from Britain so apparently Youtube thinks that I want to watch trashy bullshit full of jump-cuts and idiots talking about their bathrooms because the idiots have really, really strong Cornish accents.

I also looked at pictures of cute dogs or something a lot years ago and Google is still trying to get me to buy a fursuit(???). I mean... how? Google, how did you come to that conclusion? I am quite comfortable as a human being.

 

[Seishisha]

Pretty much everything people have said here is the exact reason i dont use social media for anything. Also the same reason i have my web browser delete it's history everytime it shuts down, im not ashamed of anything i might look at but it is nice to not have youtube suggest 200 videos of the last thing looked at everytime i use the site.

As for a bad experiance or whatever you might want to call it, a relative of mine who shall remain nameless once found out i dont use facebook so they decided to use my email and set up an account for me... without asking me first.

It took me a few weeks to work out why i was suddenly recieving around fourty advert emails a day for all kinds of garbage, it was only when somone i knew in highschool suddenly sent me an email out of the blue that i found out i now had an account.

Suffice it to say i nipped that one in the bud and canceled my account, i still get some advert emails though which i block and have filtered directly into the spam folder. I also occaisonly get an email from said old aquintence despite intentionly ignoring them because i hate socialising.

Curse you nameless relative. I will hold this grudge to the day i die.

 

[sageoftruth]

I made the mistake of watching a pewdipie video for the first and final time. Youtube has certainly made sure I wont forget that.

Heh! With youtube, it seems that all you need to do is show some interest in any video gaming internet personality and it assumes you love pewdipie. I haven't seen one of his videos and it keeps recommending him nonstop.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

I try to minimize that crap by not using social media, not bothering with an account for youtube, setting my browser to clear cookies,[footnote]and manually deleting them often, so something like Amazon doesn't try to squeeze a few more dollars out of me, based on my history[/footnote] and scanning the system for malware often. I still hate how Amazon has a stupid little tab that has "buy it again" with three products I bought years ago and only ever needed one each of. I turned off their dumb emails, too. (It's kinda annoying too sift through 30+ emails about expired offers on video games, power tools, end mills, and random categories that I rarely buy from.)

It's one thing to tell people about your product and to try and find the demographics that would be interested. It's a completely different thing to try to pick about someone's browsing history and sell that info. Farcebook doesn't sell ad space; it sells its users.

I think the targeted ad failures peak when a website posts a tragic story/video and the ad system picks out key words that turn out to be ironically sickening, like a plane crash with an ad for Travelocity. At least those scenarios bite the company trying to advertise more, since people might be off put by the apparent lack of empathy and the viewers themselves likely aren't really being data mined.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

I watched a video that mentioned MLP.
I then had at least video 1 in my recommendations box at all times, for months about MLP, always the same video.
I think clicking it will make it go away.
I was wrong.
That shit flooded my recommendations sections like the plague.

 

[the December King]

When I was single on Facebook, I got tons of dating website ads. Then I got engaged, and they were all replaced by wedding products and services ads. Finally, I got married, and... Right back to dating website ads, lol.

Well played, sir! Got a laugh from the better half and I.

On topic? No real failures I can think of, at least not ones I instigated myself... baby products, I guess, has gotten a bit annoying. Not a big deal, really, but we just had a little guy, and sure, we did have questions... but it looks like I'll be getting ads for breast pumps and rock-a-baby chairs for the foreseeable future.

 

[kissthebottle]

It's odd, but Facebook has me pretty down now. They only advertise cat related things, makeup/cosmetics, the Bioware store, and jewelery now. I think it's because I went out of my way to click the "X" and "this is not relevant to me" sort of boxes any time I got adverts about babies/having babies/anything baby related and also weddings. Hey Facebook, just because I'm fem in their late 20's does not mean I'm baby crazy or want to get married. In fact, KEEP THAT SHIT FAR AWAY FROM ME.

Amazon is evil because I will look at shoes that I want on there and then get emails from Amazon about said beautiful shoes constantly. Nothing in my price range either.

 

[FPLOON]

Why do ads think I need a bigger dick?
Why do ads think I need a date/fuck buddy?
Why must Amazon ads follow me after I close my Amazon tab(s)?

Other than that, Youtube still won't let me forget the time I got curious and actually tried to look up "porn" on YouTube... I know that thumbnail's fake as fuck! You ain't fooling me again!

 

[lacktheknack]

I once watched this video (SHUT UP MINX IS FUNNY, K?):

<youtube=gYbFpswlKyU>

...and spent two days getting YouTube suggestions for documentaries about kids getting blown up in wars.

I don't think that's what Minx was going for.

 

[LaoJim]

I've lived in China for the past eight years and spent the first few years in a town where there was at most five foreigners of either gender, all of whom I knew personally. I was always highly amused by the ads that said "Meet hot chicks in tonight" featuring the inevitable selection large-breasted Caucasian blonde ladies.

 

[Pr0]

I'm always amazed when the unskippable advertisements in a Youtube video I've chosen to watch are 100% in Spanish.

I'm not Spanish. I'm not Mexican, I'm not from South America....I'm about as dirt poor Irish American as you can get and still be posting on the internet without stealing someone elses wifi...but yet somewhere in the Google analytics algorithm for my geographic locale its decided that I might want to hear advertisements in Spanish.

I barely made it through Spanish I in high school and that was twenty years ago.

 

[Johnny Impact]

When my Facebook relationship status was "single," the right side of my screen was perpetually filled with improbably big-titted bar sluts making kissy faces at the camera. The phrase "not my target demographic" doesn't begin to cover it. I see something like that, my reaction is less raging boner and more kill-it-with-fire. Women are poison; beautiful women, doubly so; beautiful women who get boobjobs and pose for shitty dating sites, trebly so. I went through several forms of adblock trying to make them go away. Nothing worked. Then I changed my status to "complicated." A week or two later they were all gone.

It wasn't just Facebook. If someone has purchased your data, and it reads "single + male + mid 20s + valid email," you will get porn spam. A lot of porn spam. It's a good thing junk email boxes can't actually get full. No, I don't particularly want to see your "Alyssa 18yo virgin XXX double penetration" video. Nor, since we're on the subject, do I want to see anything else you or your fifty spammer friends have already offered. Some people get off on porn. I just see that someone else had sex and I didn't.

Any company that wants to make sure I never buy from them again has only to spam me. I bought one thing from Northern Tool several years ago, still get the damn inch-thick catalog every season. Casual Male has sent me something like 300 emails from the one visit I made there. And so forth. I know emails cost essentially nothing to send, but I gotta figure the catalog people are losing money.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I looked up Islam history in my country for school, and now the Internet wants me to convert. At least, that's the impression I get from all the ads.

 

[JoJo]

I looked up Islam history in my country for school, and now the Internet wants me to convert. At least, that's the impression I get from all the ads.

Yeah, I was researching a couple of things about Islam, suddenly 'Islamic Dating Sites' galore. That and the adverts seem to think I'm a lot older than I actually am, I keep getting 'Dating for Seniors' ads and ones telling me to take my kids to Disneyland (spoiler: I don't have any).

 

[FalloutJack]

Aww, I thought this is going to be about some hilariously misguided adverts.

I demand this thread be about the hilarity!

OT: I think the Escapist's got a few bugs in that territory. That poor Tech Team! Every time a new ad goes up, some of the basic board functions go down! I don't envy them their work. As much as the issue might annoy me, it's gotta be teeth-grinding for them. Plus, I think we can all agree that ALL of the captcha ads are failures. Having to just look at it makes you want to have NOTHING to do with whatever it is.