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?

 

would you want your ad here?

After analysing 6 million social media posts related to the [World Cup] tournament's group stage, FIFA's Social Media Protection Service reported 89,000 abusive social media posts with over 10% involving racial abuse.*

If you had paid for ads on social media pages related to football - your ad could have appeared alongside any of these 89,000 abusive posts. 

*Source: widely reported in all media, from original post in Instagram by Gianni Infantino [@gianni_infantino] June 2026.

B2B ... what, all of it?

"Your newest competitors aren’t other brands said the article's title". Its promo went on to say that; [the author] "... reframes modern B2B competition by detailing how AI answers intercept buyers long before they ever visit your website."

Well, it worked with me - so I followed the link to the article - which still presented itself as being about B2B. 

Except that it wasn't: it was about marketing software to businesses. 

Now ... the advice in the article might have been very good for SaaS companies. 

But for pretty much every other B2B market, the advice was nonsense. 

The top 10 websites receiving traffic from social media in June 2026

Source: Similarweb, X, July 21, 2026 @Similarweb. 

https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/

ai might make a job easier … but does it make the results better?

 Just asking.

how do you discover new products?

I'm not sure what 'how do you discover new products?' means ... so I'm not sure the respondents did either [eg does it mean a completely new product you've never heard of, or a product that is new from a different supplier that you already know?]

Either way, the results are interesting in that the top two are non-digital - and good old search engines [you know, those things that ai has killed off] is the third option. 

sorry i got the email you sent to someone else

I received this email on my email address - obviously it was for someone else with the same name. The footer on the email read:

"This message and any attached files are intended for the exclusive use of the recipient(s) to whom it is addressed, and may contain information that is potentially personal and/or confidential and/or protected by applicable copyright law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please be advised that you have received it in error and are hereby notified that any dissemination, duplication, publication to third parties or other use, in whole or in part, of its content is expressly prohibited. You must immediately notify the sender of this fact, returning the message and deleting it from the respective system.

This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system."

Note the last sentence - this is what I received when I replied [informing the sender of the error]

"Address not found

Your message wasn't delivered to resultados@xxxxxx.pt because the address couldn't be found or is unable to receive email."

Obviously written by the legal department, I find the whole thing offensive because it is instructing - and threatening - me over a mistake they have made. No 'please' or 'apologies for the inconvenience'. I'm not even sure the legal threats are valid. After all, they delivered the information to me. It is their fault - can they legally prevent me from using any information found in it. 

it's funny 'cos it's true

 

when the music is not your choice

I rarely use Spotify and so only use the free version - and I accept the ads that come with it. But the other day I had my Marvin Gaye playlist on ... and on came a track I didn't recognise as being on the playlist. Mr Gaye, definitely, but not from my playlist. A little investigation revealed that Spotify had decided to add this track to my playlist as a recommendation. Why? Am I supposed to buy it? Am I supposed to be grateful for being told about a track that I had - presumably - rejected for my Marvin Gaye list. All it did was annoy me and lower my opinion of the music service - and so reduce any chance there might have been of me opting for the paid version.

ad spend, well spent?

Three issues with this ad;

#1 Note that this suggests that any advice will be based on human experience, and yet #2 warns us that ai can make mistakes. And finally, #3 ... over a million impressions. Wowcher!

ad spend well spent?

Oh yes, I must rent one of these tomorrow. Or next time I'm in Yorkshire.

I've been asking similar for a couple of years ...

 ... so I wish I'd written this - 5 questions to ask AI vendors before you buy anything. It is very good. I seriously doubt that any business that has bought-into ai asked these questions.

my ebay 'homepage'

OK, so it does say 'discover new sellers ...' but it also says '... that you will love'. Well, why would I love these when I have never, ever, bought anything like these products before. Indeed, one is for women's clothes.

Three issues to raise:

#1 It's  doing nothing for my user experience, 

#2 It's doing nothing for those folk who are paying for these ads to appear in front of me, and

#3 I've bought hundreds of products from ebay since 2003 - surely they could use that buying history to deliver ads for products I might have at least some interested in?

ad spend well spent?

Nearly all of the 'ad spend well spent?' examples on this blog come from X - so what do you think of X's ad for it's own ads?

really?

 This meant to be an advantage. It isn't.

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. no

Only West Ham fans would buy a West Ham shirt - why advertise it to anyone else? Particularly someone who's X profile tells the software which football team he supports [and it's not West Ham]. Ho hum.

how much?

No, seriously ... how much is this product?

permission to steal?

Apparently, this is the default setting on Instagram. Bad enough if it's your personal account. But what if it's your business account where your content is being made available for competitors to use?😏

mind the gaps

 It's a little thing, but it bugs me because it makes things messy, but ...

If you leave gaps in your URLs like this:

https://www.salsify.com/hubfs/2026/Salsify 2026 Consumer Research Executive Summary.pdf

when you copy it and paste it into another format that doesn't like spaces [eg word or gmail], it comes out like this ...   

https://www.salsify.com/hubfs/2026/Salsify%202026%20Consumer%20Research%20Executive%20Summary.pdf

nothing's new?

I have no problem with the advice offered in Avoid all-caps headlines - mainly because folk like me were saying pretty much the same over 20 years ago.

And that's why I have included it here ... to emphasise that spending an hour or so going through the older entries on this blog will be worth your while because a lot of the stuff is still relevant today.

The article also talks about seeking new markets and customers as if that’s a revolutionary digital concept - and not part of Marketing Strategy 101.

a bit late

I got this email from my broadband provider. Helpful, you might think - except that I have already activated the protection offered. Surely BT's various software talks to each other?

yes, it shows ...

 

be honest ...

If you was a business owner ... would you like your ads to appear on a platform that boasts that it lets users make AI images from public Instagram profile pics? Read the story on the BBC.

 

Postscript:

Shortly after this story broke came the news from the BBC …

"Meta has abruptly taken down a new feature that allowed people to use its artificial intelligence (AI) tool to make fake images from user content on Instagram."

To me, this says Meta spent an awful lot of money on a product they thought was OK without doing any consumer research. Good business practice?

ad spend well spent? [on a dubious product]

This one goes beyond the question of me being served and ad [on twitter/x] for a product I've no interest in - it seems to me that the product is a bit iffy. OK, so it is available on Amazon as some kind of health product - but numerous reliable sources say [something like] 

A doctor explains that using peptides without medical supervision is unsafe and discusses the associated risks. He outlines specific questions to ask a specialty provider who is offering peptides to reduce your risk of side effects or poor outcomes.

But let's get back to the advertising issue. On the ad it says in very small print 'for laboratory use only'. So, if it is really* for laboratory use only then the ad is targeted at folk who are using this stuff for laboratory research, wouldn't it be easy to get a list of those labs - there can't be that many - and contact them directly? 

Having said that, if the sellers are trying to find individuals who are willing to jeopardise their health by listening to influencers and take this stuff ... well maybe scattergun advertising makes sense?

* Or are those 4 words a legal get-out clause? Would labs really be interested in a retail price with discount for using crypto?

a few years overdue?

In days gone by I did many website 'audits' ... this is the sort of thing I would find.

excellent, well done

Bought some shoes. Didn't fit. Completed online form. No quibble. Produced label for return postage [which I had to print, the only negative]. No charge for return shipping. Email confirming receipt. Then this email. 

👏👏👏

why? you're wasting your ad money

I wanted some laces for my Adidas Samba Supers. I've worn these for around 45 years so I knew exactly what I wanted. I put into eBay search my specific requirements: "Black Laces Waxed - Round,140cm 2mm".

And this was the first sponsored [advert] return.

My guess is that the seller bid on [ie 'bought'] the key words "laces" and "round". True, I wanted round laces, but I wanted black, not brown; 2mm, not 2.5; 140cm not 75.

Furthermore, the next three sponsored listings were similar in their generic listings for laces. 

Ho hum.   

excellent email list cleansing practice

 

remember this?

It was reported that Meta spent over $70B on this total  failure. Maybe if they had asked some normal human beings if they thought it was a good idea and whether they would be happy to use it [no and no].

nice touch

I do like it when websites ask for your email address and then present an 'email friendly' keyboard 👏

Just an example of some useless data …

Yes, this is just some personal information from my iPad - which I ignored - but just consider how much data storage is used up with similarly useless stats about all aspects of business and marketing 🤔

Ad spend well spent?

Rather than show an ad that is irrelevant to the vast majority of folk who might see it, I would have thought the advertiser [I've included its description below the ad] could have contacted directly those organisations that might be interested in their offering 🤔 

I can write my own words, sentences and paragraphs thank you.

 

Nothing. Ever. 

And this is why ...

Who has ever used 'clothe' as a singular noun for clothes?

And there is no way that putting a comma after 'morning' makes any sense whatsoever. I despair. 

Back to basics?

As with the early Internet, it looks as though pornography is to be the primary source of income for the ai companies? 🤔

This makes sense to me

I would like a definition of 'discovering a new product' eg does it mean a product that I've never heard of before, or a new version or brand of something I was previously aware of, but nevertheless this data seems sensible.