Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Best Buy's Big Blunder

Have you ever opened up your google email account and delved into your spam folder to try and find an email that may have accidentally wound up there? If you've looked towards the top you can always see a bunch of google ads that feature delicious spam recipes. I've always found it a hoot that google ads will pick up on key words or phrases and not determine the context that they're in. Hence the spam folder advertising spam delicacies.
I got a kick out of it, but I didn't really think much about it in a broader scope. Say for instance if you were running an online website and you also had google ads on the pages. And for instance, if google ads picked up on your products' keywords and then started advertising for similar products on your competitors' websites. Google noticed this early on and allows you to block competitor's websites from google ads so that this doesn't happen.
However, as Best Buy found out on Friday and through the weekend, the filter only works if you turn it on.
Yep, while people were attempting to buy dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, other large household appliances, Best Buy was running ads for its competitors allowing people to determine which one had the best price or the exact product that they wanted.
I can only imagine the CMO must be thinking along the lines of "DADGUMMIT!" right about now.

No comments:

 
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.