Ad Wars 2

For the past month Pluto TV has been torturing me with this stupid commercial for MTV's Siesta Key.  Pretty much any channel, any commercial break you can see spoiled, entitled young white people partying and whining about...whatever.  Hoo-fucking-ray.  It's to the point where I mute or change the channel any time I can to avoid it.  Not that it really matters since I could probably recite it from memory by now.

The thing is, though, they can show me this commercial a billion fucking times and I just won't care.  I'm not going to watch that show.  Ever.  I'm not in the age demo the gender demo or any other demo.  Why keep advertising it to me?

It reminds me of when I first used Popcornflix on my Roku.  The entire movie I was watching they showed commercials for an HTC phone that starred Robert Downey Jr.  They had a couple of slight variations but basically the same commercial 3-4 times every commercial break for like 2 hours.

I can say that the ad was effective in that I remember what it was years later while I don't even remember what movie I was watching.  But no I didn't buy an HTC phone.  I didn't even look it up to possibly buy it.  I didn't care.  I didn't need a new smartphone so whether you show that ad once or one thousand times it makes no difference.

Another time, maybe for a different app, they did the same thing only with a Lexus commercial that didn't star anyone so I don't remember what specific car it was for.  But the same thing of 3-4 times every commercial break.  And it didn't matter.  You could show this ad once or one thousand times and it won't matter because I still can't afford a Lexus.

I get on traditional broadcast networks you have to just shotgun ads, but you'd think Internet apps could do a little better job.  I think even cable channels probably do a better job at tailoring commercials to their demographic.  Like I don't think you'll probably see a lot of tampon commercials on Spike TV or Spike TV commercials on Lifetime.  Not a lot of crossover right?

So maybe whoever's running Pluto TV should wonder how many people who are watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, Rifftrax, Star Trek, or the Sci-Fi channel are in the age/gender demo for Siesta Key.  Or other MTV reality shows.  Or VH1 or BET reality shows.  I'd wager there's not a huge crossover.  Even without age/gender demos, all those channels I watch feature scripted shows, so why are you constantly advertising reality TV to me?  It seems pretty obvious to me.  I mean sure you get paid for showing ads, so maybe that's why they just shotgun them.  If you're the thing being advertised, though, maybe it's time you insist on your money being spent better.