Ever since I began working in advertising, I’ve always looked at adverts served to me sceptically. With our knowledge of the inner workings of advertising, we marketers are able to think critically about how and why ads are being served to us - and ponder its efficiency.
- What’s the targeting?
- What behaviours, demographics, or interests of mine have put me on their radar?
- Why this platform?
- What do they want me to do next?
It’s giving me unhinged ads!
But, more recently, I’ve begun to be served some pretty ‘unhinged’ adverts. As a lover of a YouTube video rabbit hole, I spend more time than I care to admit watching and listening to random videos and channels. In this time, I’ve seen some rather bizarre ads….
- A networking event for dentists
- Counter-terrorism architecture for public spaces
- Engineering tools
- PCOS dieticians
- Greek Island yacht hire
And that’s just a few of those I’ve seen on YouTube!
On Meta, I’ve been BOMBARDED by adverts for egg donation and freezing services…. And don’t get me started on Candlelight Concerts.
These ads annoy me for a number of reasons as both an advertiser and consumer. The reasons are:
- The majority of the time, they’re served at a high frequency, so I see these ads every few video ad breaks (if not more) and it’s very jarring and grating…
- YouTube isn’t a cheap platform to advertise on, so I despair when imagining how much wasted advertising budget is deployed into these campaigns – complete unnecessarily
- They’re almost always completely irrelevant to me. I know that there is much more advanced targeting available so there’s no good reason to be seeing these adverts
Particularly on YouTube, I understand why people opt to buy a subscription to go ad free. To me, the option seems to be to do this, or get served mostly irrelevant ads throughout my viewing experience.
Personalisation, personalisation, personalisation
To have adverts that are more authentic, native, and applicable to my wants and needs means platforms and advertisers need to more closely and accurately track me online. This has both negative and positive outcomes. I have no doubt the average layman would still be shocked to understand just how targeted we can be….
So, this raises the question to me – which is better? To be provided more anonymous, irrelevant adverts, or to have more of my online behaviours and habits tracked to provide me with relevant and targeted ads?
The age of AI slop
In the current digital ecosystem, consumers are inundated with a new type of content ‘AI slop’ referring to content which is of lower-quality AI-based content, hastily disseminated without much purpose or impact. It’s yet more noise in an already deafening environment.
And it has its effects. Consumers are becoming more cynical of content they see online, and less trusting of what they see and read.
Content that’s more authentic and relevant becomes more noticeable and critical to brand authority and consumer trust. Seeing content which is more relatable and speaks of more authentic topics is a breath of fresh air in this era.
Advertisers need to do better
As a consumer, there’s no way of getting around adverts unless I want to begin shelling out on more subscriptions. And, well – no thank you!
As an advertiser, I’m dedicated to shouting about the need for better advertising. It’s not about Spielberg-level production quality, it’s about being purposeful, impactful, and relevant. If we want consumers to respond and view brands well, we need to be consumer-first in our approach. Otherwise, we risk becoming yet another voice yelling into the void.
I think ultimately, better use of first-party data, personalisation and targeting is the way forward. It delivers a better user experience, a way to reduce wastage, and a tactic to improve trust.
Advertising success comes down to whether or not advertisers understand their target audience and current customers and take a data-driven approach to advertising planning, channel mix, and targeting. Every brand's first party data is a rich source of targeting intelligence which should be used in every campaign to improve results and campaign cost efficiency.
If you'd like help improving your digital advertising campaigns, please get in touch!
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| Author | Jess Austin |
| Channel | Media |