Digital ads a mainstay of the social media industry, but in spite of the fact that this is the case a number of users have been noting that they are declining in quality. Such a trend might just be an outlier, but in spite of the fact that this is the case it has been seen by far too many users to be just a coincidence.
Some users have compared the quality of digital ads with what they might see on late night television. This type of a bottom of the barrel approach might be harmful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up alienating consumers and preventing them from getting converted into customers for a particular brand.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Twitter in particular has been singled out as a terrible place for digital ads and the like. The products that are being advertised include fraudulent drones, low quality gaming apps that no one would want to download as well as ads that seem to be depicting various conspiracy theories.
Twitter is struggling so bad that I'm getting little grammar checkups instead of real ads pic.twitter.com/Edk4AostBo
— #KABUTOSWEEP (@RainMirage_Art) February 8, 2023
Twitter is broken. Why show me these stupid ads? pic.twitter.com/cIZWDOOFTd
— Patrik (@SpiciestWeeb) February 10, 2023
— Daniel Vassallo (@dvassallo) February 13, 2023Really bizarre that Twitter runs ads within ads 😂
Imagine paying Twitter millions for an ad campaign, and you end up promoting Uber Eats instead! pic.twitter.com/jF5chvk4OS
Instagram isn’t doing any better on this front, with many of the products that are being advertised getting singled out for being a bit too obscure. This seems to suggest that the user experience is declining instead of improving despite the advances that have been made in technology these past few years.
One of the major reasons for why this is occurring is an overall slowdown in the digital ad market. Major advertisers are keeping their money to themselves for now, and that has spurred social media platforms to lower their advertising prices. This has given low quality advertisers the chance to swoop in, thereby making the quality of digital ads on these platforms lower than might have been the case otherwise.
For example, the top ten advertisers on Twitter have decreased ad buys by as much as 55% after Elon Musk took control of the company. Twitter had to keep the revenue coming in, and catering to low quality advertisers might have been the only way for the company to stay afloat.
It is pretty clear that the barrier for entry has been lowered as far as digital advertising is concerned. The automation of ad buys might also have a role to play here, since 90% of all digital ads are purchased through automated software rather than after conducting an extensive negotiation with the advertising platform itself.
A recent survey of a group of companies that when combined represent a total of $44 billion in ad buys revealed some interesting facts. Around 30% of the 43 companies included in this list are planning to decrease the amount of cash that they spend on digital ads and the like. That will obviously have a compounding effect, so things will very likely get a lot worse before they start to get better.
Twitter has been reduced to buy one get one free offers on ads, since 6 of its top 10 advertisers have not purchased a single ad in 2023. Snapchat’s growth rate has halted too, so this is a problem that is impacting pretty much the entire industry.
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