it's funny cos it's true

 

as bad as it gets?

The first image is my local newspaper's home page. The ad is - it seems - immovable - so you can't get at the navigation bar. 

After clicking on the ad in an attempt to move it, and got this ...

I despair 😞 

just sayin' (in case you didn't know)

 Meta AIs Terms of Service

YOU SHOULD NOT RELY UPON OUTPUTS FOR ANY PURPOSE OR USE OUTPUTS TO INFORM PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OR DECISIONS RELATED TO MEDICINE, FINANCE, LAW, OR PHARMACEUTICALS. IF YOU PLAN TO USE OUTPUTS FOR ANY REASON, IT IS YOUR SOLE RESPONSIBILITY TO VERIFY OUTPUTS. 

[Block capitals in original]

facebook.com/legal/ai-terms

really ...

 ... a skull ?

ad spend well spent?

Not only is this of no interest to me, but the stats on this one are rather strange 🤔

how many?

This is the 'cookie' notice for a rather niche online magazine. Its content is not well suited with the amount of companies getting visitors' data.

ad spend well spent [part 2]

 Do they never learn? See ad spend well spent?

review overkill?

I'm a big fan of ToolStation ... but really, a review for a £2.95 pair of hooks?

bbc ... how many?

If you use DuckDuckGo as your search engine, the 'search' page gives information on tracking and pop-ups that it has blocked. Here's a few at random from my web history.

Some are no surprise [a newspaper that makes money from ads and selling data], others more of a surprise [ebay and temu being quite low, for example].

But one really stands out. Yep, the UK's public broadcaster. What are they doing with all that data?

one for the spam file

This was an unsolicited email. AI or human waste of time? 🤔

This is doing the rounds on social media …

The Internet is now a store - it used to be a library.

I agree.

a bit dramatic for websites ...

 ... but the message is valid.

just a reminder

 

ad spend well spent

This was on my X feed. My bio on that site includes ; 'Nottingham Forest season ticket holder ... and fan since forever'. So the chances of me buying a Liverpool FC shirt ... ?

ad spend well spent?

Yeah right, I'm looking for a bobble hat featuring a specific person - but not, I think I'll buy a woman's felt hat 😏

it's funny 'cos it's true

 

ad spend well spent?

This ad's message suggests the product is of high quality. If so, how many potential customers does it have? I'm guessing nowhere near the number of folk who have had this ad presented on their X timeline  🤔 

ad spend well spent?

Actually, the ad's not bad. A clear offer, clearly presented ... and, compared to many others, reasonably targeting. However, I've included it here so you can take a look at the delivery number. That makes the offer have - I suspect - a big cost per acquisition for new customers.

OOOOFFFF

Last time I looked, these were similar numbers for Amazon's dominance of online shopping in the US.

i despair ...

direct to consumer means direct to consumer ... NOT via a third party marketplace [such as Walmart's].  

mixed price messaging from wowcher

 

make it easy to for customers to buy

These seem about right - the first two in particular. lessons might be:

1 Maybe give browsers somewhere to 'save' potential purchases without putting them in a basket

2 Make sure total costs are upfront on the product page.

Source.

what? every day?

I try to post something on this blog every day(ish). 

Actually, I schedule posts so that one goes live every day(ish) - nevertheless, I need to find a story everyday. I don't go looking for them, just save things I see while I'm online. 

So here's the message: if you want to publish on any kind of social media you can't take a holiday.

oh dear ...

 

drunk online shopping is big business

... but who is responsible?

few checks where profit is involved?

European non-profit AI Forensics found Hugging Face is being used to create non-consensual, sexualised images of women and children with seemingly little or no monitoring or safeguarding in place. Analysis of usage of models hosted on the platform found the 73% of monitored requests were sexual in nature, and, of those, 83% sought to undress or otherwise sexualise a person (almost always a woman), while 6.7% targeted a minor. Output moderation was observed in just 3% of the instances audited - this despite Hugging Face’s own policies explicitly prohibiting the creation of sexual materials of an individual without their consent 

Source: Private Eye August 2026. Issue number 1681.

ad spend well spent?

A quick look at the stats under this ad [on X] suggests that it would seem I'm not the only person who has no idea what this ad is all about. I note that it was 'made with ai' ... so maybe no human being knows what it's all about?

it's funny 'cos it's true

 

It reminds me of this pic that I've using for years.

more bots than humans visit websites

Internet security company Cloudflare estimates that the proportion of web traffic driven by AI bots is now greater than that from humans. It says automated traffic crossed the 50% measured in June 2026 and now accounts were nearly 58% of all webpage requests.

Source: Private Eye August 2026. Issue number 1681.

apparently, the message in this ad may - or may not - be true

 You can either believe, or not.

really? why?

The folk trying to sell you ai don't actually know how to use it

 Reuters obtained internal Meta data on what happened after Zuckerberg cut 8,000 workers and moved 7,000 into AI roles. AI-generated code changes jumped 220%. New features reaching users only rose 36%. Major incidents spiked 40%. Time spent firefighting those incidents up 70%. Employee sentiment dropped from 74% to 55% favorable. Hours before the first round of layoffs went out, Zuckerberg quietly cancelled the second round that was planned for November.

Hedgie@hedgieMarkets

you know when you just click on 'agree to all' ...

 

pricing problems

This is an odd one that I'm going to put down to perhaps being a bit lazy [reusing an add originally developed for an EU country, and/or poor copy editing before it was released.

First off, the email image quotes prices in euros [I'm in the UK, we use pounds]. Hmmm, I thought, that might be a problem [ie it could be illegal as 25 euros is worth less than 25 pounds, so if the prices are in pounds there could be a case for 'bait-and-switch'].

So I clicked on the link to check - and got this ... 

Yep, the prices were in pounds - but they were from £14.99, not £24.99.

So the email message could have highlighted prices that were significantly lower - and so might have increased responses.

Update: Less than an hour later I got the same email but with the lead price in pounds not euros. But the landing page still had lower prices than the from headline. 

Marketers Keep the Paid Media Focus on Audience Targeting & Segmentation

The numbers on this don't surprise me - but I would raise the issue of how little emphasis is given to the landing page. In my opinion, if you get everything else right, but the landing page wrong everything fails.

Source: 

https://www.marketingcharts.com/customer-centric/analytics-automated-and-martech-239174

excellent way of saying goodbye

This message from sustainable fashion brand Spilt Milk reflects the nature of the organization ... it helps the unsubscriber leave with a fond memory of the business.

it's funny 'cos it's true, and ...

If you've read any of my books, you will know that I use em dashes a lot.

it's a pack of batteries ...

 

is there a human doctor in the house?

 

wow ... nobody had thought of that before

OK, I appreciate that this is about the use of  [so-called] martech - but this headline seems to be introducing a brand new idea to business and marketing. Is this another example of marketing jobs being taken by tech folk?

ai only 6 weeks out of date ...

Errr ... Oliver Glastner was appointed on July 6, 2026 replacing Vitor Pereira. 

do you include a guarantee?

 

bias research - or just poor research?

I recently read a ‘paper’ on buyer behaviour and the impact of ai on that behaviour. One of the key questions was: ‘how often do you use ‘generative AI?’ Okay, hands up, how many of you can explain the difference between ai, generative ai and agentic ai? If you can, well done. If you can’t, how could you answer this question. 

Unless respondents had to define generative ai before answering - possible, but likely(?) - any findings drawn from the resulting data are deeply flawed. By deeply flawed, I mean useless. 

Unless, of course, the organisation doing the research is selling AI services and so might be biased in its conclusions.

saying from one of my old bosses

 ... 'Pay peanuts, get monkeys'.

ai fails

I think it’s safe to assume that these failures wouldn’t have happened if ai had not been used?

it's funny 'cos it's true ...

 Well, true-ish.

big brother* is watching ... or, why I don't do facebook

I needed to know how to repair something in my van. A google search took me to a video on facebook. As the video ended, up popped a message telling me that a friend of mine - 160 miles away - was at a night club. Not a secret. But still ...

*I mean the one from George Orwell's book '1984', not the TV show.

one for the x files?

So I'm watching a TV programme about canals [on a TV with an outside aerial]. The boat is going over a massive aqueduct in Wales, but I missed its name. 

So I opened google on my PC and typed in "aqueduct … " but before I could add 'Wales' the auto-prompt thingy puts in 'Wales'. 

I have searched for aqueducts around the UK a number of times ... but why did google know I was looking for that country? 

Spooky.

*Younger readers might need to look up "the X Files TV series" 😏

Note the date of this cartoon

 

wasted search ad money

The search was for a very specific type of  motorhome; the "Transit Duetto Autosleeper". In the result, the first two ads are for campervans - which are different to motorhomes - and none are for 'Transit', 'Duetto' or 'Autosleeper'.

So the search was refined, adding the make of the motorhome. "Ford Transit Duetto Autosleeper" produced the following  return ...

Yep, Ford have paid for an ad to be presented if any searcher used the words "Ford" and "Transit" - the ad being for a brand new Ford Transit van. Not a motorhome. And not one that was last produced in 2010 ie used not new.

Ho hum.

any colour so long as it isn't black*

I wanted some information on the wiring of my van, and so entered a relevant search into Google ... and got this ai-generated response.  Note the 'typically'. I know what vehicle wiring colours are typically, but my enquiry was for specific information. Ho hum.

* For younger readers: when Ford introduced its original Model T car, it was only available in black [it made production cheaper].

ad spend well spent?

 I have no idea what this is. The ad data suggests I'm not the only one 😏

a reminder

In the world of ai, the word ‘agents’ is a replacement for the word ‘bots’*.  And ‘bots’ is short for 'robots'. 

So when you read the word ‘agents’, think: robots.

*Kudos to the marketer who thought of the rebrand.

instructions included

Soooooo, I was reading a social media article on a subject that interested me ... but the writing seemed a little clunky therefore it was no surprise when at the end of the article I read  the following:

"Since you didn’t include specific instructions with this text I have gone ahead and rewritten it into a punchy scannable format based on our previous tasks. Would you like me to generate some alternative headlines for this story or perhaps condense it down even further?"

The lesson gained from this is that if you're going to use ai software to write your articles, you should really edit them before publishing them.

a perfect review request

It's also very classy ... which reflects the experience you get at the actual place.

a little local difficulty

So I was looking for something to do in Scarborough [Yorkshire, England], and this is what Google advised. The first four were fine ... the other 'local activities' weren't even on the same continent. Ho hum.

artificial stupidity?