Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on Twitter

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by dragontamer on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @04:23PM (#33724724)

Twitter's Advertisement teams have been decimated, possibly to the point of non-existence. I've seen online advertisers complaining that their emails / issues are not getting any responses in the past two weeks, despite concerns about advertisements + brands being shown next to pornographic material (which is the fastest growing section of Twitter this year, even before Musk).

While porn has been on the rise on Twitter, the uptick of branding next to pornography is a recent issue. I'm guessing that a lot of those services Mr. Musk turned off in the past two weeks were related to brand-protection that these advertisers cared about.

Its no secret that lots of social media sites have pornography sections. But what brands want is assurances that their advertisements are isolated away from those corners, especially for brands like Kellogg's, Mars, and other brands that want to build a strong brand with children.

------

I'm not sure what Volkswagen is worried about: it could be that Volkswagen just doesn't want to give money to Twitter when its obviously going to just be funneled to Elon Musk / TSLA eventually.

Still, the loss of Volkswagen is yet another papercut in this slew of advertisers that have left Twitter.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by tdeck on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @04:39PM (#33724869)

Also worth nothing that about 4/5 of the content moderation team were laid off, so anything that involves a human in the loop will be compromised (more ML processes than you might think have a manual review phase).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by carl_dr on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @04:37PM (#33724854)

Thanks, that helps.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by coffeefirst on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @05:01PM (#33725074)

Furthermore, Brand Safety is a standard requirement for ALL serious advertisers. They have lists of topics and keywords to avoid, and if you can’t ensure that (or at least send a rep to apologize and fix it when the prevention mechanism is imperfect), they won’t run with you.

This isn’t new or complicated. The only person who doesn’t seem to understand it is Musk.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by themoonisachees on Thursday November 24, 2022 @06:01AM (#33729920)

Musk hasn't needed to understand that, ever. Every one of the companies he doesn't do actual work for he could just spare a small loan of a billion emerald dollars and be fine. He could do the same with twitter but i think he wants it to fail because he never intended on actually going through with the purchase and just wanted to pump and dump the stock.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by squokko on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @05:43PM (#33725470)

Yes, also anyone spending money with a company and can afford not to, expects to be treated like a king. They expect a real person to pick up the phone and kiss their ass.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Volkswagen says all brands have halted paid activities on... by dendrite9 on Wednesday November 23, 2022 @05:57PM (#33725587)

The pornographic content became noticeable for me at some point in the summer. It was strange, almost all in Spanish and with no clear connection to the 4ish subjects I followed on twitter with that account. That account ran its course otherwise I'd go back on and check if that is still happening.

In general I wonder what levers get connected to ad targeting. Several years ago I started to get substantial personalized ads in Spanish somewhere else (maybe youtube?) after a year it went back to English. I also had an account that had a 50-50 mix of German and English for a while.

[ Parent | on HN ]