[avree]

Additionally, just because someone is interested in Japanese candies, doesn't mean they like anime. The high-pitched annoying cartoon voice really turned me off right away, and it's not immediately obvious in the first 10 seconds (which is how long you have to watch before you can skip on YouTube) what it's for (after all, CrunchyRoll is a service for watching anime online, not ordering crunchy rolls.)

[lugg]

I believe that is intentional. Sentence missing from the blog post is still up on the reddit post[1]:

> Here's the end result. If the video tingles your weeaboo senses, that's intentional, as I want clearly uninterested people to skip the video as fast as possible. I'll explain why next.

...

> Now you might understand why I want to get people not in my target audience to skip – it's cheaper because you don't pay when people skip your ad!

In other words - you're probably not in the target audience.

Not saying I agree with why he is saying you shouldn't be in his audience (you're clearly interested in Japanese candy) but maybe you're not because you have an interest but would likely still cancel earlier than his normal audience. (which would have a much higher lifetime value making the numbers much harder to run)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/8062vs/what_i...

[chime]

> In other words - you're probably not in the target audience.

> Not saying I agree with why he is saying you shouldn't be in his audience (you're clearly interested in Japanese candy) but maybe you're not because you have an interest but would likely still cancel earlier than his normal audience. (which would have a much higher lifetime value making the numbers much harder to run)

My wife loves Japanese candies and snacks. Neither of us watch much anime. I would absolutely buy this for her as a gift for Christmas or anniversary. Previously I bought her a monthly makeup subscription and she loved it. $350/year is easily within my budget for a special gift, especially something like this that keeps giving and that connects with her emotionally (she spent some time in SK/Japan as a kid).

If I had come across this ad, I would have skipped it immediately. That being said, I'm bookmarking the site for later this year, so I guess the blog post worked better than the ad?

[ShinTakuya]

Sure but keep in mind that a much higher percentage of anime fans would like the candies than the average YouTube viewer. So essentially the cost per interested user decreases since even though people like yourself miss out, overall the wins per dollar go up.

It's a good strategy. In theory he could spend the money saved from people like you skipping the ad on a different ad that targets a more general market and end up with more wins overall.

[laumars]

The blog posts are how I originally discovered Candy Japan (which is a great service by the way. I definitely recommend). But we are a weird demographic. I doubt the majority of his customers are HN readers.

[azernik]

Correction - statistically they're not in the audience. i.e. even if you'd one person would be a good Candy Japan customer, YouTube ad billing incentivizes you to lower the false-positive rate (ie the number of people who view your ad but don't buy) rather than the false-negative rate (ie The number of people that skip your ad but would have been interested in the product).

Sometimes you get it wrong, like with GP, but that's worth it.

I think this is a Good Thing - it makes advertisers and YouTube care in dollars-and-cents terms about not wasting ad viewers' time and attention.

[ferongr]

I'm the "target audience" but the use of English made me flinch.

[keerthiko]

Agreed, as an anime fan (and spent ~4 months in Japan, love candy and love Japanese candy as much), the anglicized "Kony-chee-wa" at the start turned me off more than the concept of the ad. Either use English, or go full anime and do real Japanese with subtitles, ie what anime fans are used to.

Western-accented Japanese is the worst of both worlds.

[raverbashing]

I think people are being a bit overly critical of the ad

Yes, it could have been better, yes maybe there could have been an "adult" version of it. (I don't think the narration is bad, but I'm not used to hearing native Japanese speakers, so that might be it)

What I think they should have done is have a copywriter script it.

However the phrase "would you like to try some Japanese candy" ends at 0:04 (and "Candy Japan sends you unique surprises 2x a month" ends at 0:08) so I do think they got to the point as quickly as possible

[corobo]

The article is being overly critical of the ad system

In this instance it appears the ad may have been more the issue than the system so people are pointing out where the issue may be. Criticism of the ad is essential in this case to determine where the "burning" of $14k happened