An advert on Facebook for a brick and mortar restaurant, nothing wrong there (especially given the usually weird crap that comes up on Facebook ads). Except there is no geographic information at all. If it’s around the corner I’d pop by, if it’s in Damascus I probably won’t. So I will assume the latter and ignore it.
Why do they do this? I get they want you to click on the ad to find out where it is (and hence get a brownie point from the Facebook ads service) but how does that help the restaurant? They get their revenue from people buying kebabs not clicks. Even if they aren’t particularly local there is a chance I’ll end up in their hood sometime and fancy a kebab, but there is zero chance of that if I don’t know where they are.
I guess there may be a third party ad agency somewhere in the chain that does get paid per click, but ultimately they are getting paid by the restaurant.
Haha I just went on a rant (IRL) about Facebook serving me up sponsored posts about restaurants that are really appealing (Ethiopian, I could go for that!) but turn out to be across the country or even across the globe.
It’s a new thing.
But they are also serving me up lots is sponsored ads for private boarding schools all across the country. Damned if I know what algorithm drives that. Now they are mostly girls schools and Mini Mouse is female, but she’s aged out of entrance age for these schools some years ago.
I’m getting them for apartments. Some of them do have locations but most don’t. I don’t know why FB thinks I want to see them. I own my house and have for 20 years. And I can’t recall reading or searching anything apartment related lately.
There have been several occasions that I was going to start this exact same post concerning local food trucks. Their food pics look great, but I’m not going to drive all over town looking for them.
What makes this irritating is these are the usual litany of scams, privacy violations, extremism and just complete WTF that makes up so much Facebook ads. I mean its almost useful, I don’t hate the idea of local restaurants using online ads to reach me. They just choose to omit the one piece of information that you need to know about a restaurant for the ad to be useful.
I ended up on the email list for Live Nation concerts. They often send me emails announcing concerts I want to see, until I realize they’re in Paso Robles, which is 4.5 hours away. No matter how much I like a band, I’m not driving that far to see them. I might go to San Francisco (about 2 hours away) for a band I really want to see.
Apparently they just lump all of Northern California together, and South Lake Tahoe, Sacramento, the Bay Area, and even Paso Robles are all the same to them. I’m not even entirely sure if Paso Robles counts as NorCal – it’s about halfway between the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
You don’t. You follow them on social media, where they announce where they’re going to be each day, and wait for them to be someplace that’s convenient for you.
That’s just it. A majority of our trucks are static unless they go out of town for an event. Make a note of where a truck is one day and you’ll find them exactly the same place the next month.
Yeah, that kinda runs counter to the idea that food trucks spread the love around to everyone, but that’s where we are.