Is there anyone who doesn't know that most media and nearly all of the Internet run on advertising? It's true. social media learn everything they can about us so they can target ads to just the right demographic. The amount of money and data tied up in the advertising-entertainment industry is ... how can I put this? It's big. REALLY BIG! Like cosmically big.
And I've realized something about it. It doesn't really work as advertised1. I thought of this yesterday when I was playing one of those "free" games you can download that then constantly nags you to buy powerups or to "upgrade" your account to get rid of the ads. About the 10 trillion-trillionth time that I had to wait for the little X to show up in the corner so I could get rid of the ad, I realized that I had no idea what it was advertising.
That happens to me a lot on TV, too. I used to hit the mute button when ads came on, then unmute it when they were done. Except, time and time again, I would start to read something on the Internet and not even notice when the ad break was over. By the time I did notice, it would be time for yet another ad break. Aaaaaauuugggghhh! (Picture Charlie Brown failing to kick the football because Lucy yanked it away yet again).
This is one of the reasons I would rather buy a show2 and watch it without commercials. Otherwise, it's much less annoying to just leave the sound off.
Do you think advertising agencies or the companies that hire them ever measure how much their ads annoy people? It sounds like an important thing they would want to know. But I don't think they pay attention to this at all3. I keep hearing variations on the idea that "Data is the new oil." So there really should be data, along with pretty charts and graphs, about the risk that your ads are going to make things worse instead of better4.
Here’s a sample:
Is it really just me? Raise your hand if you ever forgot to unmute the TV after a commercial break, only to decide it wasn't worth it to hit the button for sound, then re-mute it again in a couple minutes when the next interminable ad break starts. You don't have to raise both hands. One will do. Jumping up and down in your seat is pointless. I can't see you. I'm just making a point.
You can put your hands back down now. Continue the hopping around thing if you like. I still can't see you.
We live in an age when the stuff we watch, or listen to, or play, is carefully logged and quantified. There are charts and graphs that can tell how many people watched a thing and for how long. We even have artificial intelligence that can analyze it for you and tell you what it means.
So, when the people who make the ads analyze the results, do they score the annoyance factor? How about retention? Could there be a slide in the report that says something like,
"92% of the audience found the ad to rate 5 out of 5 for annoyance after only 17 views. However, only 0.002% remembered the product it was advertising. So we're probably safe from significant backlash for another 3 to 5 months."
You'd think they would want to have those numbers handy when some angry executive calls up at 4 AM and asks why his granddaughter is complaining about his company's ads. "Oh, it's a fluke, sir. People only recognize the product if they're really really high and accidentally hit pause while they ... by any chance does she play a lot of Grand Theft Vehicle: Infinite Debauchery?"
In semi-related news, it came out a few days ago that Elon Musk is suing an organization called Media Matters because he says they manipulated the algorithm on the platform formerly known as Twitter in order to have ads for big companies like IBM and Disney, show up next to racist tweets and then used that to bully those companies into dropping their advertising on the aforementioned platform5.
Huh? Why would this work? I don't mean the part about manipulating the algorithm. Yeah, you can do stuff like that. You can hack company databases and change their web pages. You can jailbreak ChatGPT, and make it say ridiculous and horrible things, and you can fool the algorithm that places ads in your stream into putting them in inappropriate places. Computers really aren't very smart, even now.
Many years ago, some of us were playing with some early AI software6. It was software that was theoretically able to hold conversations. It didn't take long to figure out that what it really did was spit part of what you said to it back at you, often as a question. It was clever and entertaining and fooled some gullible people into thinking it was actually thinking. Very much like ChatGPT, come to think of it.
Anyway, a friend of mine started feeding specific sentences into it so he could observe its output and manipulate it. He started with something like, "You are a machine. You don't think." And the machine replied something like, "Why do you think I don't think?"
So my question is, did the execs at any of these companies think, "Interesting. Let me check that out" and then try a few times to see if it was a real thing or just a one-off? Did they consult their agency to find out what the analytics said about the annoyance factor on their ads? Did they ask if anyone else had seen this same effect, ever? Did they ask the ad company for the numbers of people who even know they advertise on the platform, despite having probably seen their ads a million times? These things matter!
That's my big question. Assuming Elon's lawsuit is on the up and up and he really did lose a lot of advertising money over this, did the people who used to pay for those ads actually think that advertising - and super-complicated computer algorithms - always work exactly the way they're supposed to?
And even if they did think the ads would only ever show up on the feeds of people they liked, what on Earth would make them think that people even noticed? I use Twitter.com sometimes. I am aware that there is advertising there. I scroll right past it without even noticing what it is, just like everyone else. I honestly could not tell you what ads have shown up in my feed, at any time.
Which I guess means I've been asking the wrong question. It shouldn't be, "Why did some companies (allegedly) pull their advertising from the platform?" It should be, "Why'd they bother to waste all that money just to annoy people in the first place?"
Here’s the prompt for the top image: “A humorous scene depicting advertising executives delivering a presentation to a group of waiting executives in a corporate boardroom. The news on the slides is so bad that the slides catch fire, creating a comically dramatic moment. The boardroom is well-furnished, with a large conference table and comfortable chairs. The advertising executives are in professional attire, looking surprised and slightly comical, as they try to continue their presentation despite the slides being on fire. The waiting executives are a diverse group, showing a mix of shock and amusement at the unexpected turn of events. The room has large windows with a view of a city skyline.”
Sorry.
If I had money.
I’m pretty sure Bud Light didn't.
This is my justification for considering this a tech topic. Data and the algorithms that process it. Oh! And it's about the Internet.
See https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-media-matters-lawsuit-advertising-neonazi-1fe499daa600f513af27ffa68d2e8b91 for marginally more information.
I think it was a knock-off of ELIZA, a very early AI experiment.