r/AdvertisingFails

https://qualtricsxmznpnygm3t.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV\_a5z4ola0G18AdE2

Hi everyone,

We're a small team building something in the out of home advertising space, and honestly the main reason I'm posting this is that we don't just want opinions from the handful of businesses we've already spoken to. A couple of bigger companies we talked to seemed keen, but two or three people liking an idea isn't the same as knowing whether it actually works for everyone else, restaurants, cafes, tech companies, food brands, local shops, whoever. That's why I want to hear from actual people here, not just the businesses already in our corner.

Quick explanation of what we're building. You've probably seen the big insulated box bag that Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat riders carry food in on their backs. We're building a version of that with LED screens built into it, so it can display adverts while the rider is out doing deliveries. Businesses would book advertising slots through an app, pick a time window and an area, get a price based on things like footfall and how many riders are active there at that time, upload their creative, and it goes live once it clears some basic content checks, nothing illegal, nothing offensive, that sort of thing. No agency, no big minimum spend, no waiting days for a media buyer to call you back.

This isn't a completely new idea, which I think is actually a point in its favour rather than against it. Something similar is already running in China. Static, non digital versions of delivery bag advertising already exist in parts of France. There's also a company already doing something close to this on delivery motorcycles in London, just not on bikes or e-bikes, and not as a backpack. So the format has some real precedent, which is a big part of why we've been developing this properly rather than just talking about it.

What I actually want out of this post is simple. We've already had some interest from a couple of businesses, but we don't want to build this around just them. We want to know if small businesses, medium ones, big ones, whoever's reading this and might want to advertise or market themselves, would actually pay for something like this. So if that's you, would you pay for it? What would actually make you say yes? What would put you off completely?

Genuinely open to being told this is a bad idea. I'd rather hear that from strangers on Reddit than find it out later the expensive way.

If anyone wants to be kept posted as this develops, happy to share more in the comments rather than drop a link in the post itself.

Is there an organized dog owner boycott of businesses that obnoxiously and deliberately use doorbells in their commercials that make dogs bark?

I came across this entry submitted to Runway’s Another Big Ad Contest, and honestly, I find it not just vulgar but deeply offensive.

The ad portrays a young boy looking at older, mustached men as if he is receiving some kind of old-fashioned “wise lesson.” One of the older men then looks down toward his partially open robe, with the framing making the sexual implication obvious. The joke then connects that implication to the garden hose.

The creator’s own caption says:

“He said ‘BE A MAN, use it "

Temu ha llevado la publicidad invasiva a un nuevo nivel, utilizando una estrategia de saturación que ignora por completo la preferencia del usuario. A pesar de que YouTube y Google ofrecen herramientas para personalizar los anuncios, la plataforma permite que Temu burle estos filtros al usar múltiples variaciones y diferentes cuentas de anunciantes, asegurando que su publicidad siga apareciendo sin importar cuántas veces sea bloqueada. Esto no es un error del sistema, sino una táctica premeditada basada en el bombardeo publicitario, una técnica psicológica diseñada para desgastar al usuario hasta forzarlo a interactuar con la marca. Más preocupante aún es el papel de Google en este problema: aunque su sistema de control de anuncios promete mayor personalización, en la práctica no permite bloquear marcas específicas, lo que convierte esta herramienta en una ilusión de control. Temu ha sido acusada de prácticas engañosas, desde falsos descuentos hasta productos de baja calidad, pero sigue dominando el espacio publicitario de YouTube gracias a su enorme inversión en anuncios. Esto plantea una cuestión inquietante: cuando una empresa se impone en la pantalla del usuario a pesar de su rechazo explícito, ya no estamos hablando de publicidad, sino de acoso digital. La situación evidencia un modelo de internet donde el dinero compra visibilidad sin importar la experiencia del usuario, y donde las grandes plataformas priorizan sus ingresos publicitarios por encima del control que deberían ofrecer a sus consumidores.

En definitiva, Temu es una estafa, sus productos son basura de mala calidad y definitivamente es una empresa que debería ser declarada ilegal.

Too many ads on tv is not good for the people who struggle with addiction. I have no gambling problem but tired of seeing ads constantly as well as athletes who are already rich doing these ads. Anyone else feel we should make some noise about the increased amount of ads?

We should be able to comment on Reddit ads.

If information were truly free to communicate, we wouldn't need ads. We'd just know what exists and what it costs.

The fact that companies spend billions to tell us things is proof that communication is a scarce resource with its own supply and demand curves