This appeared in my X feed ...
First off; the targeting: 'textbook', 'semester' and 'back to school' combined by the textbook subjects makes it obvious that I'm never going to buy one of these books.
However, it's not just me that's been presented with an ad that is of no interest to me - take a look at the numbers I've highlighted at the bottom.
Yep ... seven and a half thousand people have had this ad presented on their twitter/X timeline. And if the advertiser is paying per impression? Oh dear. The one 'like' might be a buyer I suppose - but just one like suggests that the books' publisher didn't even ask their staff to click on the heart of the ad.
Yet another poorly targeted ad - but what took my eye on this one was that I read it as if it was me who had reviewed the product - which I hadn't because I've not bought any of these boots. And if I had, why advertise them to me?
The issue is, of course, that 'you' can be singular or plural - in this case you meant anyone in the population. Far better would have been 'As reviewed by buyers'. I'm guessing artificially intelligent software thought using you made the ad more targeted. Ho hum.
This one is a bit heavy on text [do we need to know all this? And will anyone read it?] But what confused me was when I arrived on the site and this filled the screen.
OK, so it's not strictly marketing, but the subject of music downloads is part of the digital environment, so it may impact those readers who fancy a career in the music industry – as musician, marketer or otherwise.
In 2025 Welsh band Los Campesinos – who manage their own
affairs – calculated the group’s income for July 2024 to June 2025. In those 12
months their music was streamed 9.3 million times on music apps, earning them just
£31,940. Spotify was the most common with 75% of plays at 0.29 per stream.
Amazon chipped in at 0.75p per stream. Effectively; the bands do the work, Spotify et al make the [excessive?] profit.
This information is available on the group’s website [loscampesinos.com]
– though I became aware of it in Private Eye’s December 2025 edition.
Following on-screen instructions that come to an abrupt end are so annoying - and so easily addressed. To me it's a tech vs usability [marketing?] thing, with the tech folk assuming that every user has their level of tech ability. Here's a clear example - the instruction says 'access the More menu' with an image showing 'more' as being at the right end of five options ...
... but on my page there were only four. D'oh.
... how does it manage to let this happen?
' ... reviewing to prevent future issues'. Effectively, grok is saying that it has been programmed NOT to ignore prompts which resulted in these images being produced.
On a similar subject ... Woman felt 'dehumanised' after Musk's Grok AI used to digitally remove her clothes.
Not so many New Year greetings as Christmas [unless the 'Season's Greetings' were meant to include Christmas and New year?] but I liked this one ...
