Apologies for the scarcity of posts this week – the Media Insights and Engagement Conference had trouble with their website, so my stream of posts expected this week from that meeting are still waiting to be put up. So in the meantime, let’s close the week with a small rant…
Is anyone else being followed around by the digital ads from “Foreverspin Top”? These are showing up on my work computer, home computer, phone, and tablet, and have been for what I’d guess is at least 12 to 18 months. And they represent everything wrong with the digital ad ecosystem.
Almost from the time I first saw this ad – and it’s virtually the same ad, if not exactly the same, over this whole time period – I’ve asked Google to stop serving them to me. I report the ad as annoying, or that I don’t have an interest, or that I’ve seen it multiple times. And yet it still shows up like I’m living in a digital ad Groundhog Day.
And how did some Google algorithm select me for the ad? I have no interest in tops, especially “luxury tops” that start at $35. Is it because the tops are made in Canada and somehow Google found out I was born in Canada? Or that I had long arguments about what the spinning top meant at the end of Inception?
And since we’re asking questions: why, if Google is so smart, does its algorithms still serve me ads that I’ve reported not having an interest in at least a dozen or more times?
There are others, but this is the best example of why I laugh to myself at conferences or presentations when people talk about the wonders of Big Data and its ability to personalize and target advertising. Sure, sometimes it works fine; but all it takes is a bad actor like Foreverspin to poison the well of public opinion for every digital advertiser. And this is especially of concern in this age when we want consumers to be more comfortable sharing data with media networks. All the talk of building trust and transparency goes out the window when a little money overrides stated consumer sentiment.
David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
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Dude thank you. I googled forever spin ads wtf and this came up. It’s so clearly the default ad for science/tech/ male personas, but my god how many of these can they sell I’ve been seeing three years+ of ads, it’s psycho.
Canadians finally found a way to offend people (I believe Foreverspin is based in Canada)
April 2020 and they’re still stalking the web.
Nothing dies on the Web
And there’s not a ‘Sorry’ in the ad???
Shocking isn’t it 🙂
Aargh!! These damn ads! WTF??
I feel your pain! They actually stopped for a while, but the last two weeks there’s been another onslaught.
I to am in a perpetual Groundhog Day of forever spin, did you mange to find out how to block it?
Not so far… it keeps disappearing for a while, then wham! it’s back!
Haha I also got endless foreverspin tops ads almost immediately after I rewatched and looked up about inception earlier this year. Obnoxious
Maybe it’s their own Inception-style plot!
I’v got them too. It’s better than the advertisements of cures against dementia that I received before.
These are literally every ad on every page. A good example of how to piss off your target market.
I was free for a while but one showed up today 🙁
It’s absolutely unreal, I did the search for foreverspin ads wtf too – cannot shake this advert at all – I’m paranoid at the best of times but this ad has been following me for years!
Just when you least expect it, it pops up again
Damn its June 2022 and they ARE STILL STALKING ME. NO SERIOUSLY WTF FOREVERSPIN??
I just saw another round of ads myself… think of them as digital ad cicadas that appear at certain times of the year!
I have also been a victim of these ads for YEARs and YEARS. Stranger yet I’m not logged into google or anything on my phone and my phone doesn’t track cookies I’m basically anonymous and I get these ads EVERYWHERE
Welcome to the club!