We Love Your Videos

Ad companies are really bad at advertising themselves. Here’s the latest obvious mass email feebly pretending to be personalized (a more succinct version would be “Hey you, love your stuff, try us!”) that I received on an address that is not associated with my YouTube account (it’s not even supposed to be public, although it’s used on a site that was hacked earlier this year, so, hmm…).

Hi there- I was checking out your content on YouTube, and I am super impressed! I work for Brandzooka. We help people launch video ads all over the web through an easy-to-use, self-service platform. In just a few minutes, you can get your awesome videos delivered to your target audience on top sites across the web. It would be my pleasure to buy your first campaign…

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that when ad companies say they want to “buy” something (campaign, traffic…) they’re not actually offering any money. That’s a real disappointment (along with the realization that maybe they haven’t actually looked at your video, app, site…). In this case the email included a promo code, which I’m guessing, since signing up is already free, provides an initial credit.

To be fair, the last couple of times I responded to these emails, I got immediate responses, even though they just said sorry, don’t know where we got your email, and in this case they said we definitely never ever buy or sell email addresses. I don’t know that I believe them, but hey, it’s the ad business.