Sac Arrow
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- May 11, 2010
- Messages
- 21,565
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
- Display Name
- Snorting his way across the USA
This isn't really technically a "rant" but more of a "WTF I don't get it."
I'm specifically talking about Pandora, which is a website and a phone app that lets you stream music. I use it extensively (there is another thread about Pandora, but this is really a separate topic.) For those unfamiliar, Pandora lets you listen to music one of two ways:
1. Use one of their preselected "stations" for various genres, e.g. rock, country, alternative, dance, etc... and it will play various artists from that genre that you chose.
2. Create your own "station" based on a specific artist, or even a specific song. You can't play a specific song or lock it in to a specific artist, but it will play a list of artists it considers similar to the artist (or the song) you selected, and will throw in songs from your own artist. Pandora does, in my opinion, a pretty good job of matching appropriate music to the "station" you have created. They seem to have a handle on it.
There is no free lunch though. In exchange for all that good free streaming music, you have to listen to their advertisements. They both display on your screen, and they are audible.
I have a wide range of musical tastes, and I listen to Pandora for hours both at the gym and when I go on long intensive bicycle rides (did a 50 miler today, thank you.) So, I hear all the advertisements on all the various "stations" I create. And they are consistantly unique to the specific "stations." Here's where it gets weird:
Station: E40. Genre - gangsta rap.
Station: Too $hort. Genre - gangsta rap.
Ad: "Date women 50 years or older." Ad is geared toward dating older white women of grandmotherial age.
Huh? What's wrong with this picture? I'm most likely to be a young black male, and slightly less likely to be a young white male if I listen to those genres. Even given I'm a white male dangerously close to midlife years, I STILL don't see the connection there. We don't need cougars. I'm sorry, 55 year old men, regardless of race, don't listen to E40 or Too $hort. If I ever live that long, I may be the sole exception.
Station: Linkin Park. Genre - alternative rock.
Ad: "Date black women" (dateblackwomen.com). Ad is geared toward dating black women who appear to be in their 30's or 40's.
Are you serious? Do you know who listens to Linkin Park? Almost exclusively young white males of the skateboard crowd under 25. Not that there is anything patently wrong with presenting young white male skateboarders that option, but it doesn't seem to be a logical allocation of that advertisement resource.
There are lots of other types of ads as well. Like, USCG boating safety ads encouraging people to wear their life jackets, some insurance ad, the one with the mayhem dude (I forget the specific insurance company, so obviously the ad isn't very effective) and others, but the dating website ads just seem to be consistently "off" for nearly every artist/genre station selection. I'm not a big country fan but I suspect the Garth Brooks station dating website ad is probably "date-goth-chicks.com" by the same logic.
What other mis-targeted ads are out there?
I'm specifically talking about Pandora, which is a website and a phone app that lets you stream music. I use it extensively (there is another thread about Pandora, but this is really a separate topic.) For those unfamiliar, Pandora lets you listen to music one of two ways:
1. Use one of their preselected "stations" for various genres, e.g. rock, country, alternative, dance, etc... and it will play various artists from that genre that you chose.
2. Create your own "station" based on a specific artist, or even a specific song. You can't play a specific song or lock it in to a specific artist, but it will play a list of artists it considers similar to the artist (or the song) you selected, and will throw in songs from your own artist. Pandora does, in my opinion, a pretty good job of matching appropriate music to the "station" you have created. They seem to have a handle on it.
There is no free lunch though. In exchange for all that good free streaming music, you have to listen to their advertisements. They both display on your screen, and they are audible.
I have a wide range of musical tastes, and I listen to Pandora for hours both at the gym and when I go on long intensive bicycle rides (did a 50 miler today, thank you.) So, I hear all the advertisements on all the various "stations" I create. And they are consistantly unique to the specific "stations." Here's where it gets weird:
Station: E40. Genre - gangsta rap.
Station: Too $hort. Genre - gangsta rap.
Ad: "Date women 50 years or older." Ad is geared toward dating older white women of grandmotherial age.
Huh? What's wrong with this picture? I'm most likely to be a young black male, and slightly less likely to be a young white male if I listen to those genres. Even given I'm a white male dangerously close to midlife years, I STILL don't see the connection there. We don't need cougars. I'm sorry, 55 year old men, regardless of race, don't listen to E40 or Too $hort. If I ever live that long, I may be the sole exception.
Station: Linkin Park. Genre - alternative rock.
Ad: "Date black women" (dateblackwomen.com). Ad is geared toward dating black women who appear to be in their 30's or 40's.
Are you serious? Do you know who listens to Linkin Park? Almost exclusively young white males of the skateboard crowd under 25. Not that there is anything patently wrong with presenting young white male skateboarders that option, but it doesn't seem to be a logical allocation of that advertisement resource.
There are lots of other types of ads as well. Like, USCG boating safety ads encouraging people to wear their life jackets, some insurance ad, the one with the mayhem dude (I forget the specific insurance company, so obviously the ad isn't very effective) and others, but the dating website ads just seem to be consistently "off" for nearly every artist/genre station selection. I'm not a big country fan but I suspect the Garth Brooks station dating website ad is probably "date-goth-chicks.com" by the same logic.
What other mis-targeted ads are out there?
