Blog

Missing a trick

Jeff Hammerbacher said the following once:

‘The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… That sucks.’

I guess he is/was right. It is a neccessary evil all the same, companies have to generate revenue from somewhere. It has become normal practise to put up with adverts embedded in a page or video, so much so that you don't even think about it anymore. Nine times out of ten when an ad starts I'll quickly go on Twitter to see what is happening and then bounce back once the alloted time has lapsed.

Now and again I might pay attention to it. This would usually happen at work during my ten minute zone out (I work 50/10 - constantly for 5 hours - it works great). I have ten minutes and ten minutes only to either make a coffee or browse the web then its back to work and I am easily distracted... SQUIRREL!!! - so I'll stay on the page while an advert loads up. I must have got this article from Twitter, clicked on the link and got this:

I know I was logged in on Chrome on my work account - but usually if I am working here after hours I'll shove on netflix and have something playing in the background while I code away. I checked on netflix website when that ad came up and I was still logged in.

I just thought it was odd. I was going to Forbes so I expected the ads served to them to be a bit smarter than the usual drivel you would get if you clicked on the sun, daily mail or some other rag tag lowest common denominator site. Maybe netflix haven't shared their customer data with whoever serves those ads but they should. Privacy concerns aside it would make more sense. I find ads very annoying but if they were catered better to me I might be more reluctanct to look at them. This was just a waste of money to netflix and the ad people as they had my attention this time and it was useless to me.

• adverts, (1)
• netflix (1)