Today I am returning to my roots and commenting on some
advertising that I find both funny and strange. Have you noticed that the ads on Facebook
seem to be getting weirder?
Here’s an example.
Um….ok. So, first of
all, I don’t know who is doing the ad buy on this, because I (white lady, age
bracket 37 – 42) am definitely not the target audience for a piece of clothing
purporting to be made of “Disconium.”
To me, the word “disconium” just sounds like “polyester blend,” which,
if you lived through the Seventies, just makes you think “stinky.”
Also, it’s kind of cracking me up that their unique selling
proposition (USP, for non business school types) is that they are the “shiniest
hoody on the planet.” Is shininess an
important element of clothing now? If
you’re concerned about your clothing being shiny, doesn’t that kind of imply
the need for some sort of reflective safety wear? Are you running in dark alleys and unlit streets? Once again, I would point to this product and
say “Let’s have a talk about your life choices.”
At any rate, this ad is a complete waste of money for
BetaBrand, because it is too widely targeted. They would save a ton of money if they went
back into the “settings” of their Facebook ad and took out everyone over, say,
age 25, because a “wide use” buy like the one they’re probably doing is
silly. No one over 40 is buying a disco
hoodie, BetaBrand. Sorry to tell you.
Next up—an ad for a disinfectant. I’m not sure how this one got to me, because
the Facebook ad buying algorithm does not (yet) allow you to target down to
“people with wicked germaphobia,” but
let’s just assume that they also did a “wide use” buy and targeted people who
are roughly my age that might enjoy a nice disinfectant.
What’s funny to me about this ad is that the USP is that it
“kills TB in 1 minute," and then they follow that up with what is actually a pretty flippant call to action: "Try it today!"
I feel like, whoa—my Facebook experience just went from
“zero to tuberculosis.”
Tuberculosis is a little (ok, a lot) more serious than your common household
cold/ flu germ, so I think it’s odd that it would be mentioned all
casually like this. Remember, I’m not a
nurse, I don’t own a nursing home, and I’ve never been to Africa, so it’s not
like anything in my profile would indicate that I have a need for a product
that can address tuberculosis., and yet—here we are, with this company telling
me about a product that can kill it. How
successful can this ad be, I wonder? I
feel like tuberculosis is a thing that, if you have it in your house, you’re
going to need a little more than a disinfectant, awesome as this one might
be. Don’t you need drugs, and
quarantine/ isolation and such for tuberculosis? Again, I am not an expert on tuberculosis,
which is why I think it’s a little bit weird for this company to be busting out
the T-word in such a casual advertising setting. The "Try it today!" part is also funny, because like, if I need a product that kills tuberculosis germs, I don't want to "try it." I want it to work. It's tuberculosis, man, not a new brand of fabric softener that I might want to test out to see if I like the way it smells.
And finally, an ad that means well, but is just making me
paranoid. This one popped up on Stephan's Facebook the other day while we were looking for something else, prompting me to be all "Whoa— why is Facebook showing you that ad??"
Again…..hold the phone, Facebook. He never mentioned Parkinson’s, and now I’m left wondering—why did they show that ad? Is this a bad sign? What, exactly, did my husband say that prompted
Facebook to show this ad? I kind of
feel like you need to introduce the subject of a debilitating illness more
delicately than popping it up in someone’s peripheral Facebook vision.
If you see a weird Facebook ad, please, by all means, take a screenshot and send it to me. I have a collection going. Oh, and because people ask me this question sometimes, I will tell you that Facebook did actually start doing "sponsored posts" in their news feed a few weeks ago, but if you're seeing what look like non-Facebook looking ads inside your Facebook news feed, that is probably an advertising program that's coming from your browser, and you'll probably need to go in and disable that. I don't want to call it "Malware" because I haven't actually seen it do anything bad (industry types call it "adware"), but if you don't want it there, definitely go into your browser's settings and remove it. Here's an article on that.