[mrtksn]

Unlike with engineering, there's very little practical or deep articles about issues like brand safety, etc. and most people seem like parroting the same arguments without anyone explaining why this is the case.

You can build Twitter clone from scratch without knowing anything about IT at the beginning and learn it on the process but you can't learn much about brands or advertising or marketing except for some high level talks.

I have no idea how so many people can analyse the Twitter ad situation, is everyone well versed in these topics?

[kristintynski]

I run a PR agency and in my experience, the bigger the brand, the more conservative they are. Many have dedicated brand teams who care only about how the brand is portrayed. Multiple independent departments would likely be weighing in on the issue. Unless Twitter was an enormously successful marketing channel for the business (it almost never is), why risk it?

[kristintynski]

Also, many larger companies advertise on Twitter simply to cover all their bases. If Twitter becomes an advertising pariah, higher ups are going to be asking the marketing team to justify staying. Given the mediocre ROI of Twitter ads in general, I think we will see many marketing heads err on the side of caution and recommend pausing until things get better.

[mrtksn]

So what's the risk here? What happens if someone sees an ad for Adidas above a tweet saying some bigoted stuff?

I can reason for Kanye being dropped by the brands after saying unhinged things, as they directly engage with him but in the context of web advertisement what is the mechanics of unrelated content damaging the brand?

[kristintynski]

The damage of a screenshot of the ads next to horrible shit going viral. Many brands probably also have concerns about potential subconscious impacts of the association, even if they would be hard to measure.

Brand teams at big companies, especially those in regulated industries, are incredibly risk averse. With Twitter typically being a small minority in a marketing mix, there’s a quickly diminishing benefit to sticking it out.

Add in a buggy ad platform that can steal your money? Lol nope.

[Balgair]

There's a small personal side too. No one likes to see the packaging that their team spent months making splattered in a mud puddle.

[mrtksn]

Here is a quick screenshot I just took of Casio watch ad delivered by Google on a very popular Turkish website founded by ex Microsoft engineer displayed next to the topic of "Elon Musk getting rid of the Twitter managers of Indian origin" https://i.imgur.com/eO8uvsl.jpg

The content is similar to right-wing Twitter, someone says how the Woke are letting Indians replacing the whites of America and the others reply to these with counter claims. Typical alt-right BS is everywhere and this is just one example from a recent popular topic.

The website is pretty much what Musk promised for free-speech: Anything legal goes. Of course a lot of anti-govt stuff is removed all the time because, Turkey. But stuff like this stays and all kind of brands have no problem advertising here. The website is alive and well since 1999 and the founder is very well known person who moved to California for good(probably was afraid from the Turkish govt, they were arresting media bosses all the time).

My point is, that brand safety stuff might not be absolute. I get your reasoning but that reasoning doesn't seem to apply everywhere and I wonder why Twitter wouldn't get an exception too.

[threeseed]

> brand safety stuff might not be absolute

What you're missing is that Twitter is not a top-tier advertising channel.

They are a very distant 3rd behind Facebook and Google and getting worse by the day. So it's not like advertisers are desperate to run ads on Twitter. In fact it has been the opposite. Twitter had to go out of their way to convince advertisers to come e.g. brand safety teams, account managers etc.

And now that those teams are gone the status quo is actually for advertisers to not run ads.

[kristintynski]

I think it would have to be an exceptionally good ad platform for most brands to look the other way. It’s never been a great performer and has historically had way fewer advertisers than Facebook.

[UncleOxidant]

Because the juxtapostion of the ad with the offensive content makes it look like the advertiser endorses the content. Which in a sense they do because they're paying to keep the lights on.

[csande17]

> Because the juxtapostion of the ad with the offensive content makes it look like the advertiser endorses the content.

This isn't the case, not really. No one believes that Henry Ford has personally reviewed and approved every social media post that has an ad for Ford trucks next to it. That's just not how online advertisements work. (Consider that Gmail shows ads in your inbox, and that doesn't mean Ford is reading your mail.)

But activists and old-media and the like have managed to convince a lot of advertisers that it is the case. This happened relatively recently; the YouTube "ad-pocalypse" is less than ten years old. It'll be interesting to see how this perception changes in the future.

[threeseed]

You have this completely backwards.

Advertisers are the ones with the power here. It is their money and there is a wide array of choices for them to spend that money. And they have made clear over many years that brand safety is important to them.

So if Twitter doesn't want to listen to them then they will suffer not the advertisers.

[csande17]

I'm not sure you replied to the right post. I'm not saying advertisers don't have power. I'm saying advertisers' opinions about brand safety don't reflect the real world, those opinions were formed relatively recently, and they might change their minds again in another few years.

If it helps, the situation is similar to Donald Trump's presidency. The man had power, but he frequently made poor decisions based on his incorrect beliefs.

[lapcat]

> No one believes that Henry Ford has personally reviewed and approved every social media post that has an ad for Ford trucks next to it.

Because he died in 1947?

[csande17]

Among other reasons!

[Rebelgecko]

If United Airlines ads show up during a 9/11 documentary, the brand doesn't necessarily care that its their fault for buying ads on keywords like "New York flights". A screen shot will end up on Reddit regardless making fun of the juxtaposition regardless. Even even if Mr. United himself wasn't involved with the placement.

[timeon]

> Henry Ford

Not sure if Henry Ford who was spreading antisemitic hoaxes is good example here.

[rsynnott]

I believe Twitter "ads" are mostly promoted tweets; people can _reply_ to them. That's a significant risk.

(Incidentally, I just went to twitter to try to confirm my impression that they're always/nearly always interactive... It's no longer serving me ads. A couple of days ago it was at least showing me ads for online gambling and GPT-3-looking spam articles...)

[FartyMcFarter]

It's easy to understand: people in most companies don't appreciate having their ads next to porn, extremist content, or violent content. Especially so when it's posted as a reply to the ads.

[snowwrestler]

And maybe people don’t appreciate this but on Twitter, brands are totally dependent on Twitter HQ to moderate this content. That is because all the replies are tweets as well, and you can’t delete other people’s tweets.

On Facebook, in comparison, you can delete nasty comments on a post by your brand. Brand safety is far more in your own hands there. I think this is true on LinkedIn too, although I’m not certain. In general it is a much “cleaner” place because of the focus on real names and career content.

[TigeriusKirk]

Explicit hardcore porn has been on Twitter for years, and yet companies didn't worry at all about putting their ads on the site.

[justaguess2234]

Pedos and prostitutes are fine, but you wouldn't want your ads for shaving cream to be next to some guy questioning the immigration or covid policies of his country /s

[mrtksn]

The part about them not liking is the obvious one but there's nothing about why they don't like it. Is it something like not liking pineapple on pizza? is it like not liking extremely muscular human body? Or does it actually have some kind of logic?

Because if it has logic we can reason about it.

I know for a fact that all those brands actually do advertisement on some websites where horrible stuff are discussed.

[kristintynski]

Look at who advertises on 4chan. Elon is taking the platform that direction. That’s who will be all that’s left if he doesn’t figure out content moderation and get his ads team and software fixed ASAP.

[philliphaydon]

Twitter Pre Elon had not figured out content moderation but advertisers were fine with that?

[snowwrestler]

Twitter had whole teams who did nothing but make brands happy, including dealing with their many requests for moderation.

Needless to say, those folks did not write much code and many got laid off. Others quit.

[shagie]

They likely had tools to make certain that advertisers that objected didn't show up next to new viral meme (so that Procter & Gamble didn't show up next to anyone who had the hashtag #tidepodchallenge).

They also likely had tools to say "this screen shot from one of our testers put our content next to {objectionable figure} - make sure that this doesn't happen again" for advertisers to contact their account managers and make it happen.

The account managers were likely quite responsive if {jewish owned company advertising / verified} said that they were getting people replying back with antisemitic responses when customers were asking for support.

The advertisers had someone to contact and make things right - and were ok with that.

This need not be automatic.

https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1591608302076858371

> Getting word that a large number of number of Twitter contractors were just laid off this afternoon with no notice, both in the US and abroad. Functions affected appear to include content moderation, real estate, and marketing, among others

Note the "content moderation" and "marketing" categories of employees.

[philliphaydon]

> This need not be automatic.

So it's not content moderation to enforce rules and such of the system, just content moderation to apease advertisers.

That makes so much more sense now why there's so much content that gets reported and stays online and you get responses that there's no violation despite it being clear violation...

I've reported so many tweets over the last couple of years, where people are threatening others with violence, posting graphic videos of animals being killed or videos from the Ukraine war full of overly graphic content and I just get replies that there is no violation and I just assume that it's an automated response unless many people report the same content.

[kristintynski]

They had figured it out to the extent that there was moderation. I’m not saying the old approach was the right one, but brands need to understand what will and won’t show up next to their ads. Right now, could be almost anything.

[ss2003]

They banned Trump for Jan6, and Elon let him back on. Associate that with your brand.

[nickthegreek]

One example is when everday people see your ad and constantly see replies below it about The Jews, they can form unconscious relationships about antisemetism and your brand. Why would you risk this as a brand? You are paying a company serious money to promote your company the way you want it promoted.

[bagels]

People will screenshot the ad, and post complaints about it on Twitter. Asking why brand XYZ supports <abhorrent thing> and calling for boycotts. Surely that connects the dots well enough to see why a company would not want this?

[hombre_fatal]

I know what you're saying. Imagine the kind of experience you'd need to get close to the dynamics here and provide real insight instead of parroting what you hear/assume to be the answer because it sounds reasonable.

This goes for most corporate discussion on HN where everyone talks with the authority of someone who deals with it daily. Unless you do have those insights, it's not all that interesting to regurgitate what we, the peanut gallery, suspect to be true.