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?