Unilever threatens to pull its ads from Facebook and Google over 'toxic content'

Haha, this made me laugh. It’s humorous that we’re living in a period where a vocal group of critics declares that ML, AI, and incredible amounts of data and tracking are being leveraged to push ads at me so skillfully and subtly that I’m helpless to resist.

Meanwhile, like you said, I’m served the same handful of annoying ads over and over, for products I’d never consider buying. Where are all the ads for stuff that’s so desirable and targeted to me that I just can’t resist purchasing them??

Not saying that critics of advertising have no valid claims, but the juxtaposition is funny.

On facebook though, I actually disabled my ad blocker because I wanted to see the ads. However, I immediately skip over any videos that show ads. My general rule of thumb is if a video has an ad, I don't need to watch the video.

The single most annoying set of adverts on the internet. Hammy with extra ham on top.

OMG yes!! I honestly really mostly kinda don't mind ads for media that I value (youtube, spotify, etc) ... however, when it comes down to it, when I get served the same freaking ad over and over and over and over, it just drives me up the wall!

I'd go as far as to say that the end user would be more receptive to ads, if they filled ads with pro-bono charity ads promoting some charity or another ... then the user wouldn't start to hate ads, and they could probably write off the ads they donated.

It’s because the message that the algorithm is trying to match you to ads you are interested in is BS. They are matching you to ads that will make you, and others like you buy. So they are ok with pissing off lots of people since it results in shares.

The reality is that people don’t actually want enough to cover ad revenue, but ads make them buy more.

Unfortunately, the repetition is probably intentional. It's like the old idea of constantly playing the company jingle. They hope to bludgeon the product into your brain through brute force.

I'm sure it raises "brand awareness" measurements, at the cost of making people hate them.

Sounds like the advertiser needs to create a progression of videos/display ads instead of showing the same one. I work for a company that provides tools to create such ads. Maybe they need me. :D We definitely know how many times we've shown ads to which people (even across devices).

I believe `randyrand` was talking about weighing the advertising company based on the Youtube videos their ads play on, not which videos that ad company produces...

This struck a chord with me. I worked in AdTech for two years and wanted to pull my own eyes out because of this.

The reason this happens is that nobody involved gets anything out of stopping this happening. Incoming extreme cynicism.

First off, the marketers are still mostly using demographic segments - often a marketer will encounter a machine-learning model, and their first question is "who are these people" and when you can't explain how the model works, they revert to using demographic segments because they trust them more. This means they often do analysis demographically, and over target people in particular narrow age and gender demographics because they did better last month by chance.

Second, management want to keep their budgets large so their resumes look good. Their desire is to increase the amount of people they can target, while simultaneously appearing to work on interesting tech. Since social and video have recently been en vogue, spend increases on these platforms, while projects focus less on increasing spend efficiency and more on taking credit for sales by tracking customers through the pipeline. This creates a weird scenario where everyone says they're using sophisticated machine learning models, but the contractors and consultants involved are glorified powerpoint factories.

Third, the big silos, google and Facebook, probably have some incredibly sophisticated models of consumer behaviour that are incredibly efficient - but why would they want to give their advertising customers something that would reduce spend?

I am not sure the advertising party has a say. You give a budget, put your media in, and start the campaign. I don't believe the obvious feature exists: "Only play my ad once per user". It definitely wouldn't be a money maker for google. Every advertising party could use this feature to cheaply sweep through all the unique eye balls.

Its not what you want to see or buy - they’ll push the ad from a provider who’s bidding highest and providing them most revenue.

I'm always wondering who thinks it's a good idea to show me ads for a product I just bought, ad that I never saw before bought the item.

Similarly, twitter showing ads for Mac/windows only product when my user-agent clearly says Linux!

It's because grammarly is paying a boatload more than anyone else would

Grammarly's ad links directly to an immediate single-click-to-install page for their suspicious browser extension whose fine print asks for total access to look at your private webpage data, keystrokes, ability to inject mysterious scripts into every single page you visit, including email, banking, cryptocurrency exchange login pages, etc. With over 10 million active installations, they could easily use this absurd amount of power to profit in a shady manner. The ROI for their ad spend must be incredible because the average tech-naive person just has to fall for it once and then this extension is installed for the remaining lifetime of their computer. The whole thing has a stench similar to the Hola browser extension botnet incident.

"Hi, I'm <E-list celebrity> and I made my own website..."

Ugh. Seriously though I suspect it is because their algorithms have decided that you like X and therefore they only show you adverts about X, which is a small subset of all available adverts, so you get the same ones again and again.

On TV they can't target so accurately so you basically get shown every advert. This means there are more to show and it is less repetitive.

I also think advertisers don't mind showing the same person their advert a million times. It may be annoying but it works - name one competitor to Grammarly off the top of your head.

Yep, Grammarly and Wix seem to be pervasive on the channels I watch. I have no interest in using either of them, they're usually out of context with the content I want to watch, and the only times I watch them is to make sure my favourite channels get the cash (although signalling that they should target me more...)

Yes, that has been a known trend for years, dating back to the dawn of Instagram and Snapchat.

Huh. My algorithm for bathroom goods is basically: these are all the same get the cheap one.

There's probably a bell curve where we all make some decisions on brand, but some people moreso.

I wish they could put where I fall in my advertising ID. Advertisers could spare me jingles and cartoon dogs and just tell me who is selling cheaper toothpaste than I usually buy.

And the internet is probably the worst outlet for brand-building.

Why would Calvin Klein place their beautiful ad with Kate Moss next to photos of your right-wing friend's AK-47 collection and videos of his deer field dressing skills?

Not all ads are banner ads, and TV spots are no guarantee you'll have people's attention (not to mention you know less about who those people are).

There reason advertising is hard to measure despite lots of data is that the data isn't always accurate and doesn't always tell the whole picture.

When you do advertising for a big brand, things are even harder to measure than direct response advertising. Viewability is a problem, but attribution is an even bigger one because your tracking to the end purchase is missing many key data points.

Hope that helps clarify a bit.

I think they'd get a bigger bang for their buck by paying "influencers" and personalities than by paying those companies for placement.

I think the whole of concept of “brand advertising” is fundamentally flawed. A brand is a set of values that is delivered consistently and repeatedly. You can’t build a brand by showing pictures of happy people (or whatever else) with a nice copy. People just don’t care and won’t listen.

PS: I’m not referring to actionable ads, but mere advertising to boost brand awareness etc

It depends on where the purchase is made and how identity is tracked. You could have a more complicated attribution model that doesn't rely solely on the last interaction, like using clock/view-through windows.

However you also have the problem of identity tracking. The simplest way is cookie tracking but this had cross device and IRL problems. You can use services like Facebook or Google top track identity across devices, even in store purchases if you track data well enough.

Problem in both cases is that the data collection and analyses becomes increasingly complex and inefficient. However this data is a lot more sophisticated than what you could achieve in old media. On the other hand it's up to debate whether the ads themselves are efficient in the digital medium.

Personally, I believe far too many advertisers obsess over ROI without having a clue how to do proper attribution modelling. This leads to everyone trying to grab that last interaction dollar, clickbaiting, creating a divisive environment and this is why we can't have nice things.

While I think it's great that so much tracking is possible, I need to point out that many things can skew that as well.

eg - person A is going to get onto walmarts site and buy 2 things. They do a G search and click the first result and purchase 3 things. You could track that and attribute 3 items sold to a specific ad at a specific time, person, all that.

However that person was going to buy 2 of those things anyways, had no intention of clicking an ad, only thing the ad did was displace an organic result further down the page and waste money.

I've done ads for years (not a big time high tech company) - but enough to see they can work, unfortunately they seem to work for a short while, I'd say about one year - then you end up paying for clicks for your repeat customers who are actually looking for you, not looking for generic "good past near me".

There comes a point where saving the money on your click budget is actually a bigger savings than the 20% spend's effectiveness gain in profits.

For some types of businesses / some campaigns / your results may vary, yada yada.

Sadly much of the ad inventory and display is completely wasted.

How many people see a display ad for something they just bought? We have been preying upon ignorant companies and ignorant consumers who can't really tell what a sponsored search result is and what the heck organic result means, and what is a url bar? More things like this. It's sad really.

And look now you remember KFC and now just told hundreds/thousands of people on the internet about KFC.

If you had kids and do road trips you'd know exactly how unwasted that ad is.

> The target audience is being fed information that looks better suited for scientists, doctors, and lawyers as opposed to who we and our customers imagine / intend.

That's because they intend for you to go to a pill mill, and demand an 'as seen on TV' prescription.

The entire system needs to be torn out, root and stem.

The UK bans advertising of prescription drugs, which makes the ads a lot quieter.

> Through my most recent ~3-4 contracts I've come to confidently realize something I'd always suspected: companies that are in a market where advertising and marketing are just expected when comparing what competitors do is the majority of reason why so many dollars are budgeted in that direction. I don't complain to anybody who has a say in my workload or paycheck, of course, but I often find myself conversing with peers about how ridiculous it all seems and feels. That conversation rarely changes, either.

Well, if marketing in a given field is genuinely a waste of money then eventually a competitor should be able to enter the field and beat the incumbents by spending less on marketing. There are some fields where the cheap generics win out, but there are others where they don't.

Yes. Coupons are a popular way to gauge in store action, but they have a very low redemption rate and they're far more expensive than digital.

Many channels can be more efficient than digital. When I did advertising for after sale services for cars, the most efficient channels were physical mail, then radio, then specialized magazines, and then digital. Main reason was demographics and lack of focus in digital (very hard to convey a message that is not super basic).

" If your goal is to promote a brand"

As a shopper, I know damned well that brands mean nothing these days. Here's my deal: Make a great product, promote it enough so that I know it exists, is something I really need and will last, and - after I test that with experience - I'll promote your brand for free.

The deal is off once you're bought by some Org only interested in milking the brand dry.

I take your point, but it does not apply to all or most of my cases.

Often, long-established brands and products. Store staff themselves express surprise. Granted, their perspective is limited to that store and what they notice. But I've had them comment that the product sold well, and they have no clue why it was discontinued. And how I'm not they only one they've heard from about this.

In one case, it wasn't even the supermarket's decision. A product that had been purchased by the Frito Lay brand. It sold, but the Frito Lay rep who stocked Frito Lay products at that store (yes, more and more, supermarkets don't do their own stocking -- not for big brands, who purchase shelf space from them) just stopped stocking it. Store management was even readily willing to request its return. It did return, for a few weeks, and then no more.

One way or another, big brands seem to lose customers more through their own actions than direct competition.

Like my recently acquired Merrell boots. (There was a thread on that brand, recently.) Merrell used to be -- still "are", in one associates mind -- "the best".

But, they apparently have gone volume and cheaped out. I won't be buying them, again. Not because I found a better competitor, but because they sabotaged their own product.

But, maybe they're selling tons of them, trading accumulated good will against profits. Someone will bonus out, leaving the eventual wreckage behind.

These companies see all of these goods as being part of the same category: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fastmoving-consumer-goo... Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)

> These are consumer goods products that sell quickly at relatively low cost – items such as milk, gum, fruit and vegetables, toilet paper, soda, beer and over-the-counter drugs like aspirin.

I dont know about that, why shouldn't a corporation, effectively a person, use lawful speech to define how the world sees it? If you care enough, it easy enough to be informed about who is producing your food.

I feel this is something like identity politics, and something that really does not need regulation except to allow those to identify however they wish, with no determent to others.

Do you mean branding must reflect ownership?

Banning the use of brands obviously won't achieve anything desirable, but requiring transparent branding seems like it will improve the consumer market's spending decisions.

Of course, pro-free-market legislation will never make it through Republican-controlled Congress...

I'd like that. 'Sucralose' is a brand intended to seem like a substance. It's neither a sugar nor an ose: it's C12H19Cl3O8 also known as (1→6)-Dichloro-(1→6)-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside. If you burn it at over 662 degrees you get polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin smoke, which makes sense considering that you make 'sucralose' by a chlorinating process.

I have some nasty reactions to the stuff and so did my late mother, who was a total skeptic to all crunchy-granola pure-foodery. I hate that they can brand a strange chemical like this with the names of natural sweeteners and then we're expected to call it by that name. Though I admit DichlorodideoxyβDfructofuranosyl4chloro4deoxyαDgalactopyranoside is much harder to say, and contains letters that aren't even letters at all.

You'd think so, but Nestle already does this of their own free will and they don't really seem to suffer for it.

> Why would anyone buy bottled water

Some reasons: immediacy, taste, convenience, quality, lack of price sensitivity.

> Why would anyone buy [prepackaged white bread]

Texture, goes stale slower than fresh baked bread, sizing, taste, convenience.

> Why would anyone buy [brand toothpaste vs store-brand toothpaste]

Taste, familiarity, trust.

> Why would anyone buy bottled water when it comes practically free from the tap?

You're in a place where tap water is not safe to drink and don't have a way to boil it. You live in a place where tap water is safe to drink, but tastes of sulfur. You're traveling and will want water in the next N hours. ...

> Why would anyone buy branded toothpaste when the chemically-identical supermarket version is half the price?

Doesn't really matter, they are both manufactured and sold by the same company, at the same facility. The difference is just to provide the illusion of choice (and the price difference is usually much smaller, just enough to trigger a response in a certain common kind of consumer.)

Some of the products do have reasons for existing, the brand versions might not be superior.

Bottled water: Because you don't always have a tap on hand and you don't always bring a water bottle from home. Some regions doesn't have water that can be consumed directly from the tap for sanitary reasons.

Hydrogenated vegetable oil: Because of lactose intolerance, and because liquid vegetable oil wouldn't be useful in the situation.

* Why would anyone want roasted grain coated in sugar as the first thing you eat each day?*

IKR? The tub of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey is right there! And you don't have to pour the milk!

>Why would anyone buy bottled water when it comes practically free from the tap?

A question I often ask myself because the tap water in my house is literally the stuff they put in the bottles (mountain spring fresh etc). And yet the entire family drinks bottled water hauled at great carbon footprint via Costco, probably bottled in California which is 1200 miles away.

My best answer is that if I were to lay down the law and mandate everyone turn on the tap to get their water[1], I'd be viewed as the cook tinfoil hat Dad everyone hates.

How the water-industrial-complex arranged for that to be the state of play is a very intriguing question I think.

[1]Sometimes people prefer bottled water to tap only because they store the bottles in the fridge. Cold water to some people tastes better, but if you ran a blind test where you took their tap water, put it in bottles and chilled them, they can't tell the difference. This does not explain things in my house however because the bottles are kept at room temp.

and in usa, conagra

Kraft became Mondelez.

Great diagram, but it misses precisely what I found surprising about the whole thing, which is that they also own non-food brands (Axe etc.).

Here's a older brand map that also includes the non-food products:

https://crueltyfreeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/foodmap....

That happens in the US as well. Aldi and Costco have a lot of their own brands. Roundys used to be the generic brand of a nearby grocery store, but then Kroger bought them out. Kroger owns multiple chains of grocery stores across the country, including different ones in the same town sometimes.

The funny thing is that they probably use the same manufacturers as the popular brands and just also a different label on it.

American grocery stores have been doing this for a long time as well. Often their products taste better too because they use less added sugars and preservatives.

This happens in all supermarkets of Europe, basically. Examples from Germany:

Depending on the store you get either mostly only store products (Aldi, Lidl), both store products and brand products (Kaufland, Rewe?) or mostly brand products (likely Edeka)

The case of what you mentioned is the reason why the Schwarz Group (Lidl and Kaufland) are moving overseas, respectively to the US and to Australia: there isn't much price competition.

Disclaimer: work for them.

That's a little bit tautological and a little bit misleading; tautological because widely-known beers have nationwide production and distribution and so of course they're produced by big companies, and misleading because unlike unlike self-care products like Axe and Dove, the different beer "brands" owned by major brewing firms tend to be run out of different breweries with different practices; they're different products, just with shared financing.

And, obviously, within any one local market, there will be far more better-known regional brands, often not owned by any big corporation.

AB InBev has a 28% global market share for beer. Interestingly as beer consumption shifts towards craft beers they are buying up a lot of the more well known and successful ones.

Indeed, the same factors that led to their success (global supply chains, standard ingredients and manufacturing processes) eventually could make the irrelevant, as the brands become irrelevant.

Oh, it does, by lowering the production cost of the products, which allows competition to drive prices lower.

Unless, of course, the market turns into a monopoly. But even in oligopoly markets (such as the cola/soda) there is still plenty of choice, especially around lower cost products and with the rise of white-label/home-brand products.

If the prices were higher, it would be trivial for local businesses to displace them in stores.

I loosely assumed it was because they don't have much faith in them actually being organic or fair-trade.

From the top of your organic link: "Requirements vary from country to country". And the fair trade article also lists concerns with over-certification and validation consistency.

To pretend they are very clear definitions when applied to products is wrong.

Similar to Anheuser-Busch selling off-label "microbrews" with no information on their true origin other than "Brewed in St. Louis".

none. A company can own multiple brands.

Eternal court battles about what counts as a company to start.

You'd rather have to put some limit on how big a company could be, in terms of revenue/etc., and also limit the ability of people or organizations to own multiple companies.

But that's called communism and is frowned upon in most capitalist growth-must-be-eternal countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_(brand) is owned by a parent company that owns a lot of dairy brands, but their marketing emphasizes feeling good about consuming a completely non-dairy product (which some customers, like me, do because of objections to the dairy industry).

You can see some of this on display at

https://silk.com/our-story/history

https://silk.com/healthy-living/plant-based-diet

Notice the Danone link at the bottom of those pages (!!). (Americans will know their yogurt brand as "Dannon".)

When people I know "vote with their wallet" they are buying handmade soaps at the farmer's market (for example), not Dove. Even brands like Organic Valley and Patagonia are probably only moderately better than average.

Dove is for women. Axe is for men.

Nit: neoliberalism means different things depending on context, but it really doesn’t mean “new-fangled leftism”.

> Note also that the worshipping around Elon Musk is much the same thing, just for techies.

Huh, you mean Musk doesn't actually push R&D more than other car manufacturers / launch providers?

Its only natural those marketing tactics work. Who the hell does have the time to research environmental impact when buying a $4 brush. Don't forget to also research its durability, health impacts, social ethics, and so on. Apart from "evil" gov regulations, consumer organizations can help you to at least some degree. But i doubt that is enough for a good society.

Huh? Are you confusing brokerages with mutual fund?

If their yearly "new and improved" marketing is to be believed then we are a long way from perfecting any of those products.

Because in online circles, the 'alt-right' has basically become synonymous with white nationalism, advocacy for an ethnostate and/or belief in a Jewish conspiracy.

Ben Shapiro is in opposition to those views.

As the other commenter mentioned, the alt-right is to some extent an advocacy for white supremacy and white nationalism. It comfortably falls into the spectrum of the identity politics, as well supporting authoritarian strategies (nationalist border and trade policies).

Ben Shapiro is mostly a classical liberal with personal conservative beliefs. Anti-authoritarian, focus on individual identities and universal policy.