with my fractured shoulder i’m now spending a ton of time in my easy chair watching ‘nerd of the rings’ videos on my tv via firewire, logged into my (non-paid) youtube account. no adblocker there, so ads are rife.
previously (like earlier this year) all ads shown to me were in english. but now about 20% of them are in spanish. no big deal, i’m expanding my spanish language skills a bit as a result. but i am curious as to why. i’ve not been doing anything spanish-related on youtube it elsewhere online.
Assuming you’re not using a VPN or changed a setting, it might be that a Spanish-language marketer is looking to target people just like you for some reason. Or it could just be the ad serving algorithm hiccuping.
Clear you cookies and log out of your YouTube account and see what happens.
What permissions does your phone’s microphone have? If you said the word “Spanish” or some other Spanish phrase in earshot of your phone, it’s possible you were heard, and the marketing beast was listening. A few months ago my wife was holding her phone playing a game, and stated “I think I want a milkshake”, and literally within five minutes her email chimed as she received a coupon for a milkshake at The Habit, a burger chain in our area.
I’ve been getting Spanish ads on and off on YouTube as well. And a LOT of ads about Medicare. Once, even an ad about Medicare in Spanish.
Can’t be due to my phone - when I’m at home I pretty much don’t speak and no one is their but the parrot. OK, I speak to the parrot, and he even answers back, but I doubt the algorithm is going from “pretty bird pretty pretty bird oh you’re so pretty hey baby hey baby you’re so pretty” to Spanish language ads for laundry soap.
I’m saying there is no such thing as “targeted advertising”. Marketeers love the idea, people selling ads love the idea. Nobody in advertising is interested in how effective a particular form of advertising is. They might find out that it doesn’t matter an iota what kind of advertising is used (showing themselves to be unneccesary).
and investors don’t usually keep investing in companies for 15-20 whose business plan is a scam. And the companies that place their ads with them don’t keep giving them more and more billions to run more ads if it’s nothing but a scam, to say nothing of the government apparently letting these scam companies keep perpetrating their scams.
Or has there been some big exodus back to companies placing ads in the Yellow Pages that I’m not aware of? I guess that’s a good plan if you want to corner the hipster market.
I was under the impression that the more prominent advertisers care a lot about how effective their ads are. YouGov pays me a trivial amount to answer questions that often relate to advertisements. No doubt there are many other surveys going on all the time.
When ordering online, it’s normal to be asked how you found a product.
I’m sure they try to find your targeted demographic. I’m much more sure they will find someone to show your ad to and charge you for it.
As someone who is caring for a mentally handicapped child, I can give you quite a large list of companies advertising to someone who will never, ever buy a car or any of the other products the “targeting” algorithm linked to my son.
Call it imprecise or call it a scam; I would say those companies are getting scammed.
Hence Spanish ads for someone who doesn’t speak Spanish, car commercials to people who don’t drive etc, etc.
A semi-related thing I’m noticing is that quite often the 3rd or 4th suggested video from the top on the side is some Asian language. Hindi, Korean, etc. video. Since I don’t speak any of those languages it’s puzzling.
Furthermore, checking those channels shows that they generally are practically brand new with a tiny number of views. Why such algorithmically low rated channels get such a prominent place in an English speaker’s list is really weird.
At the very least, YouTube’s language matching system is broken.
You know, I thought this was just me, or it was a California thing or something. I’ve been getting much more spanish ads and videos in Youtube and TikTok, even though my language is set to only English.
I wouldn’t mind Spanish ads - so long as they are short. I realize I’m getting it basically free but I tried to watch a video the other day an had to set through two 30 minute ads back to back.
I started watching YouTube videos with Brave browser. Ads are removed from the videos.
I don’t know how it’s done, nor how long Brave will get away with this, but the absence of ads is wonderful. You’ll see an ad only if the presenter actually plugs a product in the video. I’m seeing a little more of this, but it’s not offensive.
After using Brave for a while, I made it my default browser. That was a big step to take, but I did. And I did not get into all the Brave money points or whatever.
It would have been nice if YouTube would have professionally broke into a video for the ad, but, nope, just bam right in the middle of a sentence. Something like those free tv channels on Roku. Just insert the ads with no thought, just make money and abuse the viewer.