Comment on Google caught placing big-brand ads on hardcore porn sites, report says
WoodlandAlliance@lemm.ee 7 months agoYou not caring about something is vastly different than a brand caring about something.
Brands supposedly pushed Google in to the “adpocalypse” and other types of ad revenue purges. Why? Because supposedly their content was being shown next to uncouth content.
So, now you tell me. Why should it be OK for Google to do what they constantly take money away from others over less uncouth content?
It’s about the hypocrisy. If you cannot see any, you’re not looking.
Come on, you do know a lot of people take offense at porn for various reasons, right? And most mainstream brands don’t like being associated with offensive stuff…
Wat
It’s about what the advertisers themselves have said. They supposedly don’t want it. It matters fuck-all what you or me think.
Dogs? What?
Anyway, nobody’s saying certain sites shouldn’t be allowed to have ads. The issue is which ads are shown on which sites. Advertisers don’t want their ads showing up next to content that their target audience might consider offensive. They also don’t want to waste their ad budget showing ads to people who aren’t likely to respond to the ad. The ability to pair ads with content that appeals to a certain audience is the whole reason Google is such an effective advertising platform.
Wish I could remember what FAST stands for right now
Most mainstream brands don’t like to say they’re beyond willing to be associated with offensive stuff as long as it makes them money and they can pretend they aren’t associated with it. Google knows what they’re doing and they’re more than happy to take the bad press, which won’t effect them in any meaningful way.
For a lot of brands their most valuable customers are middle and upper class people, and their tastes tend to veer prudish/judgmental/conservative on these things. IE with the example of a kitchen appliance manufacturer, we think that’s a very popular/cross-class purchasing category, except for the fact that for tons of us our kitchen appliances are chosen for us by our landlords and among homeowners, the only ones who are regularly going out and swapping out their kitchen appliances are the well-off ones. LG’s best customers, and this is true of most businesses, are their rich customers.
For the most part, rich and affluent customers’ tastes count for more just because they can consume more, and many of the people in charge of advertising decisions at these companies are themselves middle or upper class, so it’s like a self-reinforcing ideological loop caused by structural economic inequality. The population at large’s opinion about whether shit like this even matters can never enter into the equation because it’s all driven on a per-dollar, not per-capita, basis.
SCB@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Because it’s not about whether or not it should be no big deal. It’s about whether or not it is currently a big deal
I totally agree with you personally, but whoever was in charge of this should know better.