Although the championship game is played out on the field, every year the Super Bowl provides another chance for intense competition in the form of advertising one-uppery. This showdown will be no different: after Hyundai announced it would film its Super Bowl ad during the game and air it directly after, Snickers says it will air the first live ad in the history of the NFL championship. [More]
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PepsiCo Will Advertise Fancy Water During The Super Bowl
By 1.24.17
Americans are now officially drinking more bottled water than carbonated sweetened beverages, or are expected to soon. What does that mean for the beverage industry? It means that PepsiCo is bringing its new premium water brand LIFEWTR and its infuriating name to the Super Bowl. [More]
Hyundai Says It Will Produce Its Super Bowl Ad Live During The Game
By 1.18.17
Every year, the NFL’s championship game not only pits the two best teams in the league against each other, but it sends advertisers scrambling to come up with the newest, best, most-buzzed about commercials they can air during the big event. This year, Hyundai has decided not to film its ad ahead of time, and will instead wait to roll cameras while the game is happening. [More]
Why Is Google Blocking This Ad-Blocker On Chrome?
By 1.18.17
Ad-blockers might have started out as kind of a weird niche thing for techies and privacy advocates, but they’re now commonplace. Every major browser app lets you run plug-ins or extensions that can banish unsightly, privacy-compromising ads from your sight, and these browsers generally stay out of the escalating war between ad-blocking users and ad-blocker-blocking sites. Yet, the makers of one ad-blocker say Google has thrown their app out of the Chrome store, and disabled the service’s function in Chrome for all users. So what gives? [More]
FTC Orders Company That Used Verizon ‘Supercookies’ To Disclose Terms, Provide Opt-Out
By 12.20.16
A couple of years ago, Verizon caught a lot of heat for a very sneaky practice: the company was inserting a unique, permanent piece of code into all the web traffic on your phone, without user consent, so that a third party could track your every digital move for advertising purposes. After a public outcry, Verizon finally stopped, and settled with the FTC… but that third-party remained a loose thread in the story. Until now. [More]
Facebook To Work With Fact-Checkers, Let Users Flag Fake News Stories As “Disputed”
By 12.15.16
If you’re sick of seeing your friends from high school sharing outrageously untrue news items that are clearly hoaxes, or originally posted on websites with names like “HawtClikzNowAmerica!” or “biznoosclickstore.nz.bike,” you may soon have a new tool to help flag this sort of nonsense. [More]
Facebook Discovers, Improves Another Ad Metrics Problem
By 12.9.16 — Updated: 12.12.16
Facebook makes money from monetizing your political arguments with your former roommate’s great-aunt, and advertisers want statistics that show what they’re getting for their ad dollars. That’s why it’s of note that Facebook recently told advertisers that it’s been overestimating how many people a given ad is going to reach. [More]
Ad Watchdog: Lowe’s Should Clarify That Major Appliances Sale Excludes Most Brands
By 12.8.16
An annoyed customer brought a Lowe’s appliance ad to the attention of the National Ad Division, a self-regulation program for advertisers run by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Their complaint? An ad promoting “20% off appliances $396 or more at Lowe’s” was largely untrue, except for the parts that said “appliances” and “Lowe’s.” [More]
Activists Emphasize Walmart’s Crime Problem In TV Ads Airing In 4 Cities
By 12.7.16 — Updated: 12.16.16
A number of Walmart stores around the country have been called out for being the epicenters of disproportionate levels of criminal activity and calls to the police. Now a union-backed labor advocacy group is using this information against the nation’s largest retailer in an TV ad campaign highlighting Walmart’s alleged high crime rates — and its cost to local taxpayers. [More]
Is It Time To Get Serious About Cracking Down On Stealth Instagram Ads?
By 11.30.16
If you’ve used Instagram, you’re almost certainly familiar with apparently real people touting tummy-flattening tea, an array of subscription boxes, the benefits of some multilevel marketing scheme, or the latest in fashion, beauty, and electronics. If these people are being paid to shill these products, then they have to clearly be flagged as ads. Though the Federal Trade Commission has pledged to get serious about going after advertisers who taint your Instagram feed with these stealth ads, some consumer advocates say the FTC simply isn’t doing enough. [More]
Pressure Mounts For Tesla To Stop Using The Term “Autopilot”
By 11.29.16
What does the term “autopilot” mean to you? For many people, it applies to a machine that can steer itself with minimal human intervention, but for electric carmaker Tesla it’s a marketing term to describe a feature that is decidedly not hands-off — and which consumer safety advocates believe can cause potentially dangerous confusion.
[More]
Get Ready To See Even More Exclusions On Department Store Coupons
By 11.22.16
If department stores can’t break their addiction to discounting, designer brands want to help. Brands like Michael Kors and Kate Spade are selling fewer of their products in department stores. Other brands are keeping their items in stores, but insisting that they not be discounted. [More]
Facebook Says It Found More Mistakes In Metrics Reported To Advertisers
By 11.16.16
So, remember that whole thing about Facebook mistakenly telling advertisers for two years that users were watching videos much longer than they actually were? It turns out that wasn’t the only advertising metric the social media company got wrong. [More]
Google, Facebook To Fight Fake “News” Sites By Blocking Them From Ad Money
By 11.15.16
Google and Facebook are, hands down, the two most common ways for basically everyone to find information: either you’re searching for links on one, or browsing your news feed on the other. They’re also the two biggest advertising companies in the world, which gives them some leverage to feed or starve some content. And when it comes to totally bogus news, both are now going to take the “starve” approach. [More]
Facebook Tweaks Its “Ethnic Affinity” Advertising Feature To Address Discrimination Concerns
By 11.11.16
After coming under fire for allowing advertisers to use race-related information to exclude entire swaths of Facebook users from seeing an ad, the social media company has decided to tweak this feature to address concerns that it could be used to illegally discriminate against people based on their perceived ethnicity. [More]
Facebook’s Out Of Ad Space On Facebook, So It Wants To Put Ads On Your TV
By 11.4.16
First Facebook took over your web experience. Then it took over your phone. And now, more than a decade after the internet’s second-biggest advertising company (Google’s first) launched infamously in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook is all set to start delivering video ads on a whole new platform next week: your TV. [More]
Facebook Allows Advertisers To Exclude Users Based On “Ethnic Affinity”
By 10.28.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
Advertisers have always targeted their marketing to the demographic most likely to be interested in their product, but is there a difference between running an ad that you know will probably mostly be seen by people who fall into just one ethnic group and an ad that actively excludes people outside of that group? [More]
This Woman’s Job: Smearing Makeup Globs Just Right For Photos
By 10.25.16
When you see a photo in an ad or on a website of a cosmetics product that’s been artfully smashed, smeared, or scattered on a surface, that’s a special kind of advertising art that requires special tools. What’s it like to smear lipstick around for a living, smash eyeshadows, and build towers of perfume bottles with a hot glue gun? [More]
