[HN Gopher] Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activiti...
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Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on Twitter
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-11-23 21:02 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| Market distortions tend to fix themselves over time. Either
| Twitter's ad rates drop so supply and demand get back into
| balance, or someone will gladly take the eyeballs VW was getting
| at the current rate.
| squokko wrote:
| Twitter is a very weak advertising channel. It's not going to
| move the needle in the broader advertising market.
| speakfreely wrote:
| The different companies buying ads are not interchangeable.
| Brands, who typically have the biggest budgets, all care about
| brand management (where their brand is shown, what it's shown
| next to, before and after), which can't be done effectively now
| that the staff that handles these things has been gutted.
| There's no way to get those advertisers back without rebuilding
| that part of the business and there's no other type of
| advertiser that can step in to fill the size of that gap.
|
| If anything, the reduced quality of the performance marketers
| who move in to buy ads for scammy weight loss, skin care, get
| rich quick offers are going to drive away any big brand
| advertisers who are actually trying to stay on Twitter and
| weather the storm.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| soon it'll just be my pillow and other weird scam stuff
| iwillbenice wrote:
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| People are considering this possibility and investing
| accordingly. One guy has tracked the performance of some of
| these companies openly proclaiming their anti-Twitter position
| and claims that they've been underperforming the stock market.
| This means there's a chance to short them.
|
| https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/anti-twitter-advertisers-h...
| 0898 wrote:
| It's fascinating that Volkswagen is presenting itself as a
| paragon of virtue, having spent years actively deceiving
| regulators over its cars' emissions.
| danudey wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I'm not seeing VW present itself as a
| paragon of virtue, just not advertising on a platform which no
| longer has teams capable of managing advertising (e.g. ensuring
| that you're not showing your advertising next to pornography or
| white nationalism).
|
| No one is playing the virtue card here, it's just practical
| business.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| In the past, VW celebrated the diesel engines in their cars
| because of the higher mileage. The emissions, though, weren't
| so great and they were caught deceiving the regulators who
| try to stop air pollution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
|
| I think these events are pretty separate and independent.
| squokko wrote:
| I don't think this is virtue signaling - it's just walking away
| from a business partner that is in a period of extreme chaos.
| CharlesW wrote:
| None of the advertisers reducing or eliminating their Twitter
| spend are paragons of virtue (or have presented themselves as
| such). You'll see more and more companies allocating their
| advertising budget elsewhere until Musk can prove to agencies
| that he's capable of ensuring rudimentary brand safety.
| theCrowing wrote:
| As an automotive company I would also divert my ad spending from
| plattforms that are controlled by the ceo of one of my
| competitors...
| testbjjl wrote:
| But that's not the reason why, chaos is, though I imagine it
| didn't give them pause. We all can speculate about what comes
| next. My guess is Elon saying he "inherited a mess" much more
| "broken" than he could have imagined. I also notice bots aren't
| much part of the conversation any longer.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I think General Motors is another one very publicly making the
| same kind of announcement. It does seem like a competitive
| decision motivated by the car business.
| carl_dr wrote:
| Can anyone why ELI5 please? The discussion on Twitter isn't very
| ... analytical.
| squokko wrote:
| 1) Why enrich the CEO of a competitor car company?
|
| 2) Why do business with a company whose CEO makes public posts
| like a 9-year-old edgelord?
|
| 3) Why even bother? Twitter can't have been more than 1% of
| VW's ad budget.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Twitter's Advertisement teams have been decimated, possibly to
| the point of non-existence. I've seen online advertisers
| complaining that their emails / issues are not getting any
| responses in the past two weeks, despite concerns about
| advertisements + brands being shown next to pornographic
| material (which is the fastest growing section of Twitter this
| year, even before Musk).
|
| While porn has been on the rise on Twitter, the uptick of
| branding next to pornography is a recent issue. I'm guessing
| that a lot of those services Mr. Musk turned off in the past
| two weeks were related to brand-protection that these
| advertisers cared about.
|
| Its no secret that lots of social media sites have pornography
| sections. But what brands want is assurances that their
| advertisements are isolated away from those corners, especially
| for brands like Kellogg's, Mars, and other brands that want to
| build a strong brand with children.
|
| ------
|
| I'm not sure what Volkswagen is worried about: it could be that
| Volkswagen just doesn't want to give money to Twitter when its
| obviously going to just be funneled to Elon Musk / TSLA
| eventually.
|
| Still, the loss of Volkswagen is yet another papercut in this
| slew of advertisers that have left Twitter.
| squokko wrote:
| Yes, also anyone spending money with a company and can afford
| not to, expects to be treated like a king. They expect a real
| person to pick up the phone and kiss their ass.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Furthermore, Brand Safety is a standard requirement for ALL
| serious advertisers. They have lists of topics and keywords
| to avoid, and if you can't ensure that (or at least send a
| rep to apologize and fix it when the prevention mechanism is
| imperfect), they won't run with you.
|
| This isn't new or complicated. The only person who doesn't
| seem to understand it is Musk.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| The pornographic content became noticeable for me at some
| point in the summer. It was strange, almost all in Spanish
| and with no clear connection to the 4ish subjects I followed
| on twitter with that account. That account ran its course
| otherwise I'd go back on and check if that is still
| happening.
|
| In general I wonder what levers get connected to ad
| targeting. Several years ago I started to get substantial
| personalized ads in Spanish somewhere else (maybe youtube?)
| after a year it went back to English. I also had an account
| that had a 50-50 mix of German and English for a while.
| carl_dr wrote:
| Thanks, that helps.
| tdeck wrote:
| Also worth nothing that about 4/5 of the content moderation
| team were laid off, so anything that involves a human in the
| loop will be compromised (more ML processes than you might
| think have a manual review phase).
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