now you see it ... oh, no you don't

One of the first things I advised folk about website design back in the mid 1990s was 'light background, dark text' - black on white is best [like every book you've ever read]. This is why ... I put the red arrow on to help  you find the text 😏]

using ai

A tad off-subject, but On Becoming a Cyborg is the best article on the use of AI that I have seen.

Ad spend well spent?

Binders apparently 🤷 I didn't think they were still a thing in the digital age. 469 thousand 'views' - not cheap.

i said subscribe ... do it now!

On this site the 'subscribe' notice was fixed ie no 'cancel' or 'x'. To get rid of it, you had to sign up. The notice didn't block much of the page, but users couldn't see all of the content.

Ad spend well spent?

I have no idea what this ad is for 🤷

Note that of the 103 thousand 'views' this ad has gathered, only one person added a comment - and that comment was to repeat the ad. Ho hum.

fake 'personal' social media posts

Full marks to this young lady for taking money off of folk who want their friends to think they were at a concert. She's paid to take a photo of her customer's social media profile on her phone at the actual venue. Customers then post it with comment "me at whoever concert" with the stage in the background.

Minus marks to anyone sad enough to want to post on their social media pages that they've done something they haven't.

Ad spend well spent?

 I'll have to drop everything and get one ordered 😏

you know all those views on youtube?

This is in Brazil - got to assume there's the same kind of 'phone banks' all over the likes of China, Russia and India?

Link to video on X

as clear as green and white

OK, so maybe it's a problem for those who are a little later in life - but it is a usability issue caused by, well ... no reason.

The problem is similar for the UK's two biggest car-park payment apps - BayByPhone and JustPark - and the issue is that both of their logos are different online and on app ...

Of course the designers [who are unlikely to be later in life] would say web and app icons are similar enough - but that's the problem. When you're in a car park, and it's raining or the sun is shining on your phone's screen and the notice has words and no logo, or the 'web' logo and your phone just shows icons ... which is which? Oh, and the two companies using the same colours doesn't help.

It's a problem that simply doesn't need to exist.

The Rise of the Ray-Ban Meta Creep

Can anyone give a reason for wearing these glasses that is not morally reprehensible? See article.  

or just use google?

 

is time standing still?

Nigh on 30 years ago when I was standing in front of business folk extolling the benefits of this new thing called the Internet, one big positive was that, unlike printed literature, web pages could be updated in real time. Ho hum.

 

more cookie-consent woes

This one filled half the page - and that's about all I can say because it was impossible to scroll down to see the 173 [yep, one hundred and seventy three] third parties and click on the 'icon on the bottom left'. I wasn't desperate to read the content, so left the site.

snappy urls ...

nope, never seen you before

 What do you do to log in if you're already a member?

And yes, I realise the site might have dropped a cookie on my PC last time I was there ... but what if I'm using a different device?

worth considering?

 

Ad spend well spent?

 Does anyone know what this means? I don't - and it appeared on my X page.

hard to switch when you're already there

This one of those 'intrusive' ads [the ones that block the website it is shown over] you must click on - somewhere - to close it. That is bad enough for me to feature hers, but it's not the reason ... 

... no, the reason is that I was surfing on Google Chrome. Ho hum 😏

oh dear, who could have seen that coming?

 

scary ... or stupid?

 

incredible/incredable

How credible is an organization that can't spell credibility?*

* This was part of a post/ad on X by Kwasi Kwarteng. 

better than @noreply I suppose

This is a strange one to me. Why not monitor replies to this email? if nothing else, if someone replies it tell you they've received and read the thing. And why bother setting up the third level domain for 'emails' and then not using it. 

marketoonist - always funny because they're true

 

e-commerce is not 'direct to consumer'

It's a bug bear of mine, but DtC is when a manufacturer/producer sell direct [ie no one else is involved] to the end user.

I read this in an article about a successful clothes designer ...

' ... her direct-to-consumer fashion brand, designs and produces female apparel and accessories. Referring to the company’s launch, she told me, “I had no idea how to make clothes.”

She does now, impressively, with multiple manufacturers, a thriving community, staff, and eager customers. She shared her story in our recent conversation.'

Note: 'with multiple manufacturers'. If you buy something from a manufacturer [even if you had the items made-to-order exclusively for you] and then sell it to the end user, by whatever means [eg online or physical shop], you are a retailer. Selling purely online does not make you direct to consumer - your website is the link between the manufacturer and the customer. If you want to be pedantic; you are the manufacturer's customer.

Note: I do not mean to decry the success of this business or its founder - my objection is to the term used in the article to describe the nature of her business. Indeed, her business started by her selling items that she had made [manufactured] on Instagram - that was DtC ... but as soon as she bought in stock she became a retailer.

So why do so many companies declare themselves DtC? Well, partly because it sounds sexier than ‘retail’, but mainly because DtC is considered to be a ‘tech’ business (don’t ask) by investors - so you’re more likely to get ridiculous amounts of funding from the 'tech bros' if you identify as DtC. The irony - amongst other things - is that DtC is nigh on impossible to scale up, so creating sufficient profit to pay off investors is pretty much zero.

how long?

I'm going to assume this is accurate [though I would like to see the research methodology], in which case I find the results somewhat alarming ... yep, that's nearly seven hours a day watching video 😱

Footnote: for some attempt at objectivity, I considered my own time watching videos online. Even at my maximum use [eg watching a film, researching something on YouTube, some news, 'funny' video links from X] I couldn't get close to seven hours for one day, let alone every day. Most days I weigh in at under an hour.
 

reviewing the review process ...

 As a rule, I do not give feedback or reviews. So when I got this email I was about to delete it when I thought 'what product s that?' So  I clicked on the link and got this:

Well, that was the end of the road for me. But - and here is the reason I've included it here - I think that would be the end of the road for most folk. 

The lesson? If you want reviews, make it easy for folk to give them - the more barriers, the less chance of success.

effective ad spend?

Platforms such as Spotify and YouTube offer subscription access which includes no ads. So - pretty much by definition - folks who access these sites 'for free' are either mean or they can't really afford the subscriptions. 

And yet the majority of ads I see on such platforms [I don't pay for subscriptions as I do not use them enough] are for luxury brands or expensive products that are way - and I mean way - beyond my budget. 

I raise this issue because I'd like to know how marketers buying these ads are identifying and/or selecting [or even if] their target markets when spending their ad budgets.

the way things were

This design style is what most websites looked like 1996 - 99ish. 

This one was live as of the date of this post. The content was last updated in 2024 [but not the design 😏]

marketoonist - always funny because they're true

 

up to date? errrrrr ...

 I took this screenshot from a website's homepage on the date of this post. Oh dear. Even worse is that other aspects of the site have been updated in 2026.

 

google picture search ...

 Close, but no cigar.

I haven't been an academic for five years.

The first picture isn't me. 

I'm no longer a Senior lecturer - and I never worked at Teesside University.

[Note that my up-to-date employment history is readily available on the web]

Other than these, not too bad. But AI has a reputation for making errors and/or guesses.

In this example the errors aren't a disaster. But what if it was a health or medical enquiry? Or flight details? Or car repair advice? Or an assignment or dissertation? Shall I go on? 

making easy things hard ...

 When I tried to open my gmail account this morning I got this: 

Now, let me make this clear: not only do I not wish to have AI-powered email, but I would be unlikely to ever communicate with someone who has an AI-powered email - so I started clicking to get my gmail home page. After going round in several circles I finally got this message ...

  

To me, that reads like it's my fault. It wasn't, it was Google's. I wonder what part AI might have played in this shambles? 

inbox inefficiency

 OK, this was in the 'from' and 'subject' line of an email. What do you think it is all about?

I doubt that any of you - or, indeed anyone - would realise it is a promotion from a hotel.

I stay there several times a year. When I first actually read one of their emails [how many did I simply delete as spam before then?] I did have a quick word with the manager the next time I was there. He dismissed it as 'that's the marketing department'.  I bit my tongue and just said 'they're costing you customers' as I left. 

I'd have given him 10 minutes for nowt over a cup of their excellent coffee. For a night's stay I'd have talked with the marketing department for a morning or afternoon. Or sold them a copy of my book. Or they could simply have typed something like "tips on effective email marketing" into a search engine.

The irony is that it is a very good hotel in a very good location with reasonable prices, ie that have three of the 4Ps right ... but without the right promotion, they are wasted.