Tag: Advertising

Why Can’t We Fix These Nags?

We’re not loyal customers. We’re data points.

There are so many things we become numb to. See something often enough and you almost ignore it’s there. Constant reminders and notifications about things to buy are certainly in that category. You get used to them, know they won’t really go away, and yet every now and then, one of them just jumps off the screen and hits you wrong and pisses you off. 

The ones that really grate are the ones that encourage me to buy something that I already own or subscribe to, or deals I’m ineligible for. Like the “Don’t Miss 3 Free Months of Music” one pictured above. I’ve been an Apple Music subscriber for longer than I can remember, yet I keep getting this offer that’s obviously aimed at new customers. I find it insulting.

Look I get it. Companies want and need new customers. Older customers drop off as the prices inevitability rise. Discounts and free trials always entice. But to insult existing and long term companies with offers that essentially undercut the established relationship is just that. Insulting. 

With all of the latest and greatest tech innovations, why can’t companies find a way to know that we’re already a customer and keep from sending us these offers that insult loyal users for already supporting them? Based on the blizzard of emails, text spam, and notifications you almost instantly receive after buying a product from other companies selling the same thing that tech obviously exists. Maybe all of these moves into “personnel context” will solve that. I doubt it. In fact, I will bet that it will only make the situation worse. 

Customer loyalty hasn’t been what it used to be for quite a long time. That’s old school, corner store thinking. Today we’re not viewed as customers. Just another data point. 

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Streaming Services and Sports

Streaming fantasies

I have a fantasy. It’s a sports fantasy. Actually it’s a sports viewing fantasy. Perhaps it’s an entertainment streaming fantasy. Regardless, it’ll never be fulfilled.

Just about every streaming service has jumped onto the live sports streaming bandwagon. That’s understandable. Sports attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs equal money. Money makes the balls bounce.

Streaming services that I turn to insist on pushing their sports investments on to the top of their poorly designed homepages, forcing the user to scroll if they aren’t interested. Of course streaming services homepages are notoriously poor user experiences to begin with.

Like I said, I get all the reasons behind this. I get that the streaming  executives have overpaid for the right to stream whatever they’re streaming and are trying to capitalize on the investment, on the way to raising prices to cover that cost, and perhaps find a few new viewers who might not already be fans. It feels very much like my grandkids screaming “watch this, watch this!”

To be fair, things have gotten better. Streaming services that feature live sports have at least reduced some top line over exposure along the way, or provided tabs for different categories that segment sports and other viewing genres. But they could go further.

So, here’s my fantasy.

Give users an option to not see sports programming so prominently displayed on the already atrociously and algorithmically designed homepages. A simple switch that says “give me more of this” or “give me less.” Trust me, as someone who likes to view sports, I’ll find a game or a match that I’m interested in if I want it. And I’m sure there are plenty of users who will want to see sports programming prominently featured. So let viewers choose. Those who run these networks should be interested in that choice.

Streaming services could also extend a give me more or less feature to other  programming. How many times do you need to see the same title displayed in different categories, or after you’ve watched it, or have to scroll past a genre you have no interest in?

Whether it’s sports or any other entertainment genre it seems to me it would be better to gauge interest ahead of time, instead of waiting for viewership numbers after the fact. Who knows, it might be a good way to provide metrics that might actually be meaningful when it comes to thinking about where these services are going to spend money in the future.

Like I said, it’s a fantasy.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links. 

 

Time For The Shibboleth of Targeted Ads To Die

It’s always the data.

We all fell for it. We all thought it would be beneficial to us as users. I don’t want to say we were all suckers, so I’ll just say we were naive. But in the end we were all suckers. Targeted advertising was supposed to cater to our needs, desires, and wishes. Surfacing what we were interested in out of the clutter was a hope and a promise that died in colliding avalanches of greed and gluttony.

 

St,small,507x507 pad,600x600,f8f8f8.

To be fair some ad targeting actually works. To also be fair, even a broken clock is right twice a day. But the money came rolling in and the temptation to grab it all became far too much and made it far too easy to let slip those early promises.

Now the brains behind Artificial Intelligence are doing what many suspected from the get go and edging their way into the browser wars. TechCrunch has an interesting post talking about Perplexity’s plans to get to know us better by building a better browser.

Here’s the money quote:

“That’s kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” Srinivas said. “Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It’s not like that’s personal.”

Focus on the “personal” part.

Both Perplexity and OpenAI have made statements they would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser should Google be forced into a breakup for anti-trust reasons. But that’s years away. So why wait? Better to get in the game now before the regulators catch up. Or before all the data that’s good to grab gets grabbed and starts feeding on itself.

There’s irony in all of this that underlies and underlines the dissembling behind it that might just be seeping into the open. One of the promises of this new technology is that it will free us from drudgery, giving us all more time for creative pursuits and more balanced lifestyles. But the underlying goal is the same. Grab as much data as possible, especially “personal” data. That’s the currency. That will always be the currency.

Here’s the second money quote from Perplexity’s Aarvind Srinivasa:

“On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you.”

AI might continue its move into the enterprise, but that’s not enough. And if the corporate mindset of using AI to replace workers continues, that equation points to diminishing returns eventually, even if the advertisers never catch on.

We all know how this story plays out. Because it’s a rerun. And too often a plagiarized one as well.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.