Two in the Bush

Elon Musk hopes to turn the fortunes of Twitter around (dare I say he wants to flip the bird?). Already he complains of losing advertisers, so it's a good guess his best hope is to fire more staff. Which could lead to a further loss of advertisers, and so it goes. But why would anyone advertise on Twitter?

I enjoy Twitter. I use it for entertainment, for leads to good articles, for bookmarking those articles, and for informative threads by people who are pretty smart. But the smart ones aren't advertising.

If I'm like most people, ads on Facebook and Instagram are mostly annoying. I scroll past them and gain a negative view of the companies trying to interrupt me. But Twitter posts are small, and scrolling past ads is easier and less annoying. I don't remember any of them.

On the one hand, I appreciate companies willing to subsidize my source of information. On the other hand, I wonder what compels them to do it. Social media depends on advertising, but it has a poor track record of delivering results. Advertisers would do well to verify a return, if any, on their investment, and to consider the ethics of condoning Musk's irresponsible management.

One day, there will be an online forum that excels at advertising. It will be entirely devoted to advertising, helping people find what they want and need by letting them compare items to all similar products. This idea made Sweet's Catalogue of yesteryear wildly successful. It can be done digitally (Sweet's hasn't yet mastered the transition from print) and for a host of product types.

Perhaps this future forum will subsidize an editorial branch, like an old-fashioned newspaper. If that branch were Twitter, responsibly monitored, and the only ads were to remind me that a helpful advertising site makes this possible, I would be happy. I'd consider those sponsors smart.

Targeted

I should to be concerned: Facebook, Twitter, and Google know all about me. And they use this information to target me with ads. That's how they make their money.

But they are so bad at it. Not at making money, but at how they use information about me to influence my buying decisions.

I'm offered deals to pay off my college bills (I graduated 40 years ago). I buy something online and am bombarded with ads for the item I already purchased. I'm curious about something, so I check the internet and am hounded by big data for weeks.

I have come to avoid online ads like the plague. They hardly ever offer what I'm looking for. Who wastes money on those things? I don't claim to be normal, but am I that far out of the loop on this?

Does big tech know my every move, my every mood, but have no clue what to offer me? Or do they know next to nothing about me? Or do they just intentionally annoy me with stupid offers? These companies offer excellent services for info searches and socializing, but the way they make money seems sketchy.

It just might be a swindle. A recent Freakonomics episode suggests that every dollar spent on online advertising brings in about 40 cents worth of revenue. Is "value-subtract" a business buzzword? More study is needed, I'm sure, but this sure sounds like a scam.

Ads I find compelling are sponsorships of PBS and NPR programs. I used to go to Home Depot because they support This Old House, which I like to watch sometimes. Then I found out their founder spent a lot of money to promote the political candidacy of a guy who spent much of his time lying to us. So I figured he too might be untrustworthy and could influence his company. Now I mostly go to my local hardware and garden supply stores. Big box stores can be handy, and I don't boycott them, but I seldom need them. I get better service at my local stores, which seem to be doing OK, maybe because my neighbors have a similar view. Home Depot posts more ads than the local stores do, but these are easy to ignore.

I accept that advertising can be helpful. In 1906, Sweet's (now Sweets) first released a catalogue for architects and builders. Basically, they collected advertising brochures, organized them by product type, bound them into an encyclopedia, and provided a good index. It grew from a single volume to 50,000 pages in multiple volumes. Some manufacturers spent their entire advertising budget on Sweet's. For many decades, if you wanted something for construction, you checked Sweet's, compared products, got real data about those products, and chose what suited your needs. This was and is to me ideal advertising: useful information for making an informed choice. Sweet's comparative format encouraged manufacturers to provide helpful information. Slick cut sheets could influence one's view of a company, but without real information they were quickly passed over for a competitor.

Granted, online advertising is more complex than what I'm implying here. But I'm not convinced that a lot of sellers aren't being had. And, until I see evidence that they have me cased, I'm not going to worry that they know too much about me.The internet is where we go to get this type of information now. It's a messier, clumsier search than Sweet's was, but the internet peddles so many products that this is understandable. Google helps me search for products that I may need or want (although they are not great at it) but I hardly ever click an ad instead of an "organic" search result. If I do, it's likely a mistake, which just annoys me and makes me less likely to buy what they're selling, even if I feel apologetic for costing them a click.