Unusual pastimes

I love reading B2B brochureware and white papers produced by the online advertising industry. DSPs, retargeting, behavioural targeting, predictive targeting, that kind of stuff. Yes, I know. What a pervert! But it’s actually both interesting and amusing. Interesting because words very often give away who is doing something real and valuable and who instead is just full of bullshit. The former tend to speak in simple English and to spread valuable information instead of merely trying to hard-sell their wares. The latter use vague terms and a lot of hoopla. Which leads me to why it’s amusing.

Things have got so out of hand that not only we consider it normal to shoot at people – “targets” – we would like to sell our stuff to, but that we’re surprised when these people don’t want to be shot at (“elusive targets”). At the same time, advertisers who want to sell these people to companies talk about a “connection” you can make to “engaged” audiences. But fail to say that what they’re engaged to is whatever they are doing, and not what you are trying to tell them or sell them. Which leads me to wonder: why do advertisers hate their job – annoying people – so badly? It’s fun!

This what the job is about. Pretending it isn’t – pretending that (normal) people want to have “a relationship” with their bank or to be “engaged” by the makers of their shampoo is delusional, as the race to who has the most “like”s on Facebook or “followers” on Twitter proves beyond the shadow of a doubt. You follow your shampoo? No wonder you’re life – and your country – is fucked up. And to go back to advertisers: isn’t coming to terms with the fact that people don’t like ads and have other things to do in life the first, necessary step to creating work that actually sells products?