Thursday, March 19, 2020

A programmatic advertising fail? Some other fail?

OK, imagine that you're a state district judge running for re-election in Texas. You're being primaried, and elements in your own party recruited the opponent. (The particular judgeship is for the full county, and at the same time is the only district judgeship in the county, to finish the scenario.)

You're doing ad buys in the local papers and on websites for local radio as well. Maybe a few voice ads as well.

No teevee in the county, but two small-regional commercial broadcast stations are in the next county over.

Why do you have ads on the website for at least one TV station that is in the next market to the WEST, nearly 100 miles away?

This isn't hypothetical, it's real and happened in North Texas. If this was a purely programmatic buy, then some programming needs to be fixed, unless the ad cost was dirt cheap even for Internet buys. Nobody in the Texoma area watches Wichita Falls teevee, or, presumably, regularly visits the websits of stations there. (I stumbled on it while looking for something else.)

If it wasn't a purely programmatic buy, it's an even bigger head-scratcher.

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