I think I’ve come across a new ad that could contend for the dubious honor of being the seediest high-circulation online ad to blanket major web properties since the X10 hidden camera ads (which are, of course, still going strong). Look, I’m no prude; I stay up late, bet on football, and regularly exceed the speed limit, but there has always been something downright creepy about the way X10 pushes its product. Hey, if a stalker or a weirdo wants to buy a product, who’s to stop them, right? OK, but is it just me (I didn’t even major in Women’s Studies, but…), or do the ads seem a tad insensitive, in the sense that they’re not-so-subtly highlighting “watching” behavior that would make 99.9% of the female population uncomfortable? Most of us laugh these things off as “cheesy.” It’s just more spam, right? Like the spammers trying to push Viagra on us or our frequent Nigerian correspondents who want to defraud us out of our life savings by sending us spam email. Maybe it’s the same deal with the X10 ads, but to me they cross a line.
And once they did, you can bet others will try to follow in their footsteps. One large web-based email provider I checked out recently is persistently running ads for a lock-picking product. “Never hire a locksmith again!” Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Harmless, right? Hah. Wait ’til next year. Someone will be trying to disguise drug paraphenalia as a handy doorstop, or will be offering to send instructions for science experiments which can make small explosions in your backyard. “Send that old birdhouse sky high! Blow your neighbor’s lawn ornaments to smithereens! Void where prohibited by law!” Nudgerino, winkerooni. And all for the low low price of CPM $0.49.
If this premise is true – the X10 ads are not just annoying, but offensive to a large segment of viewers – why then are large companies like Yahoo and the remaining few major web-based email providers (eg. mail.com) allowing their landscapes to be so dominated by such dubious messages? (Don’t say they need the revenues. The CPM’s on these kinds of ads are extremely low. No large business can run on them indefinitely. Don’t say “to encourage people to upgrade to premium services.” This isn’t the only means of doing so, as any software company could tell you.)
Granted, there are potentially reasons for some people to dislike almost any product available – SUV’s pollute the environment, for example. But last time I checked there were actually laws against breaking and entering and spying on people. Small hidden cameras really do probably make a good home security option. But wait, why are the ads implying that you’ll be using it to look down tops, and up skirts?
Mainly, though, it’s the feeling of being in a low-rent district that disturbs me about some online publishers’ willingness to prostitute themselves out to the lowest bidder. Even if you don’t agree that the X10 and lock-picker ads are creepy, offensive, etc., you might agree that these ads seem pretty juvenile and low-rent (not low-brow, low-rent), like X-Ray Specs, fake vomit, and itching powder. Not exactly the sort of fare you might see advertised on TV, even during wrestling.
Then again, I’m probably missing the boat entirely. We live in an age of infomercials, where TV affiliates have no shame about showing ads all night long involving soft-core porn, spray-on hair, and ThighMasters.
Anyway, maybe it’s time for the big online publishers to get some focus groups together. Ask 1,000 women what they think of the X10 ads. Ask some law enforcement officials or airline officials what they think about the ads for the harmless lock picking tool. And then maybe ask themselves whether it would be so hard to find different advertisers so that we don’t have to look at that crap every time we go to check our web-based email.