Notes

Location based ads on Twitter and TikTok may not be where it’s at.
uhr kaufen

I spent last weekend on a city break in Copenhagen.
Very nice. Recommend it.
In between hunting for the ultimate Danish pastry and drinking the odd Tuborg, I noticed I was being served Danish language ads on Twitter by Danish based advertisers.
This is totally lost on me, I don’t speak Danish.
So then I thought, how many other non-Danish speakers are being served this ad? How much is the client being charged to reach people who can’t read the ad?
It wasn’t a one-off either. I also screenshotted this ad;
Now, I know Wolt is like Deliveroo or Uber Eats because I saw cyclists everywhere with this logo on their big, cube bag. But it’s being shown to me, in Danish.
My Twitter profile is written in English. My UK location is tagged on my profile. My url has a .co.uk domain name. I’ve never typed a single Danish word in my life.
How are the other social apps doing?
FaceBook accurately served me a Sussex related ad (I live in Sussex) even though I was in Copenhagen.
Obviously, being under the same Meta umbrella, Instagram have got the same ad targetting gubbins as Facebook, and so accurately served me an English language ad for a UK resident (eg. someone who might want to sail to France, and pay in pounds).
TikTok have got the same antiquated system as Twitter, serving me a Danish language ad.
Now Copenhagen is big, but it’s not London, New York or Tokyo big. How much are advertisers paying Twitter and TikTok to serve ads to users who don’t speak the language or are non-viable customers?
Are these ads a result of a poor ad serving system, or of poor ad buying by the clients or the agencies buying on their behalf?
A little digging, and it turns out you CAN target language and location on Twitter.
Also, TikTok has location based advertising but not language — but as this is a video based platform maybe language is not an effective method of targetting.
It seems a little too coincidental that on both Twitter and TikTok I saw poorly targetted ads all through my feed, but on FaceBook and Instagram I didn’t see any.
Do FB and Insta have better default controls or better educate their advertisers on these features? Maybe TW or TT ad targetting features don’t work as well?
I would just assume a company as big as DSB would not be making this mistake, either because they have a big inhouse department dealing with this, or pay for an experienced agency to manage it on their behalf.
Of course, large organisations make mistakes all the time, but this just seems a little too fundamental and basic.
After checking Facebook’s Ad Library, we can see DSB have a range of active ads and a long history of using FB ads, so they must be getting positive results from them. They’re all in Danish, so maybe there’s an opportunity to introduce themselves to foreign visitors in their own language — especially highlighting their cheap prices.
Is targetting and other advanced features something that Linda Yaccarino, the new Twitter CEO, needs to be looking in to? If it’s as bad as it seems, then yes.
The web is meant to provide ad targetting and tracking beyond marketers wildest dreams, but if it can’t tell the difference between English and Danish, what’s the point?
I haven’t dealt in paid ads for years, so I don’t know what’s possible on these platforms, but this caught my eye. Anyone got any ideas what’s going on here?
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