I watch a decent amount of television online with advertisements. I watch the Daily Show from their website and a handful of shows on Hulu. I am consistently shocked at how poorly managed and targeted the advertising is.
A few examples:
I see ads for the completely wrong demographic. Hulu has my full name and my email address (not to mention all the shows I watch on there). There’s not much excuse for showing me feminine products. Broadcast TV has to go with the average demographic, but the whole benefit of Hulu (to the advertisers) is the ability to accurately target. Why aren’t they?
I routinely see the same advertisement, over and over. There was a week or so where I saw the same ad on the Daily Show repeated, with every show. I’d see the ad three times per episode. Sometimes I’m catching up on some old episodes, and I’ll watch several episodes in a row. By the 12th time a night that I’ve heard the same damn ad in a row, I resolved to never purchase anything from that company again. They have to know that even good ads can be overplayed, right?
I saw an ad for a broadway show several times. Now, I like musicals, so this isn’t a total demographic miss. In fact, I was intrigued enough to look up the show. What confused me was that I live on the West Coast, and the show isn’t touring. They can’t possibly be getting good returns on that ad in Santa Barbara, can they?
Is it that online advertising is still so cheap that it’s not worth it to have someone pay attention to it? I’m just confused that, with all the effort (supposedly) going into trying to monetize the internet, traditional tv-style ads are being mismanaged so horribly.
I wonder if some of the repeat/misdirected ads are a result of a low number of advertisers. It can seem stupid to watch the exact same ad before every video clip but maybe that’s the only guy paying for ad “time”.
Not a TV example but I once played an online game that they tried to fund by running an ad when you logged in or out. The ad they had was for an athletic shoe. Nothing about the game or its probable demographic said “Sell basketball shoes here” but I assume that was the one guy they convinced to run ads on their game. So every time it was the same stupid ad for the same stupid shoe that probably no one bought.
Advertising that uses google analytics data is targeted correctly. Anything else seems pretty bad. That’s what I have noticed. The targeted ads on SMDB, for example, are generally perfectly targeted based on the thread title (although there are occasional punny flubs).
I’ve never noticed any targeting of the SDMB ads. It’s always either a huggies ad, or that ad that is a shopping checklist for a VW Jetta. Or that ad where I’m using a Jetta to buy huggies. Oh my god, I must be a father. I never knew it until now, but it all seems so obvious. Google can’t be wrong. It’s time for me to man up and find the mother of my first born; it’s time for me to sell my Z-car and buy a minivan so that I can care for my child. Thanks Google for sending me on a quest to find my child.
Hulu annoys me in weird ways. It says at the top of most ads “Is this ad relevant to you?”
And it appears to do NOTHING.
I do not have pets. I always click no. And yet I still get the ads. Sure, maybe that ad had to show for some contractual reason, but why freaking ask???
And on Hulu, 2 commercials usually show up before your program starts and at clearly visible intervals. If you skip to a point after one of those intervals after watching your two commercials, you get stuck watching ANOTHER commercial. It sucks when you’re trying to pick up where you left off of something (it doesn’t always remember where you stopped) or find one scene.
I use Adblock on most sites. Not because I hate all ads, but because they are done so poorly on so many sites… taking up too much bandwidth, too big, too distracting, too loud.
I guess I’ve been getting all your penis-enlargement and young girls with barnyard animals porn ads. Sorry. Of course, ever since I had my uterus and ovaries removed, I don’t need feminine hygiene products, either.