You may have seen the ad I screen-shotted (is that the term?) above while watching something -- ANYTHING -- on YouTube lately.
I know I have.
My wife has, too.
In fact, everyone I know has seen this ad, constantly, on every video, in every category, for weeks.
It’s gotten to the point that I hear complaints even from people who would agree with the message of the video saying “God -- this ad AGAIN!”
This ad came out of nowhere and suddenly found itself at the beginning of every -- single -- video.
It might seem benign, or even harmless, but when you really start to think about what’s going on it (if you’re anything like me, anyway) you start to ask yourself some questions.
Like…
Why isn’t this ad targeted?
A few years ago myself and my friend 
The campaign went as follows:
Target users who follow PewDiePie on Twitter and Facebook
Once these users become players, incentivize them to tweet their favorite YouTuber (PewDiePie)
PewDiePie gets so many requests from his followers to play this weird game that he plays it, thus launching the game into the stratosphere and making it a financial success.
And it worked.
Why do I mention this? Because I know first-hand how effective a targeted social media campaign can be.
We had next to zero money to do this. And please note when I say that, I’m not being hyperbolic. I mean that we needed to get the results of a $10,000 campaign with about $200.
We had to be smart. We had to think differently and utilize the advertising targeting features with laser-precision. We came up with an all-new approach to targeted marketing that allowed us to bolster our game to the level that it received over a million players in its first year and brought in a nice passive income, all for a couple hundred dollars.
The reason I point this out is because the ad above is simply not targeted at all.
I watch videos of all different kinds of stuff, ranging from politics, to eating competitions, to hours-long ambient PsyChill playlists. This ad was playing before ALL of them. My wife, too, who watches a whole different set of categories of content (“You are NOT the father” type stuff, pregnancy videos, news clips, etc.) and is a different gender (a very very VERY important metric when targeting an advertising campaign), was getting this ad before EVERY video she watched as well.
In fact, this ad campaign is so large in scope that it dwarfs even the release of major blockbusters like Infinity Wars.
YES. An ad about a guy talking about tax law has a bigger financial backing than a multi-million-dollar Marvel action movie.
Just think about that for a second.
This ad is not targeting at all. It is spraying in front of any audience, regardless of their age, gender, or the category of the content they like to watch.
That is EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE.
How expensive is it?!
According to Blue Corona: Measurable Marketing Solutions:
With YouTube advertising you pay per video view. So how much does advertising on YouTube cost? A typical video ad runs between $.10 and $.30 per view, depending on your video quality, your targeting, and your overall goal.
How that works out is that if your ad campaign had a $0.10 video view, you would pay $1,000 for every 10,000 people that watch your video ad. Next we’ll take a look at how quality and targeting can affect that cost.
So, I’m going to make a few assumptions because I don’t have the numbers for this campaign in front of me, but based on what I’ve seen, which is that this video is reaching everyone I ask about it multiple times on any number of content for the last few weeks, I’ll do the numbers for this ad being shown 100 million times.
On the low end, this would cost this simple man talking about how he looked into the new tax law…
ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
That’s on the low end. On the high end, this campaign could be costing three billion dollars.
Again, I don’t have the numbers for any of this in front of me, and I’m just estimating, but I don’t think what I’m estimating is unreasonable since I’ve had this ad put in front of me at least a few dozen times.
Honestly, this ad is probably being shown hundreds of millions of times.
This is clearly propaganda
There is NO WAY IN HELL that this simple accountant who just happened to discover something not-so-good about the Trump tax cuts was able to set up a multi-BILLION-dollar ad campaign on YouTube alone to tell people about it.
This campaign is massive, and it has the kinds of deep pockets behind it that you see in national political campaigns.
We are looking at a campaign that is saturating the online content market completely, without targeting.
And what’s the message?
Classic classist divide-and-conquer.
It’s a message about how the “1%” is ONCE AGAIN getting it waaaaay better than YOU are.
This is designed to create a you-vs-them mentality, when the mentality that you SHOULD have is that a rising tide lifts all ships.
It’s true that the rich and corporations are getting a good deal with the latest tax cuts. But it’s also true that practically EVERYONE is getting a better deal. And when it comes to understanding what goes on in different tax brackets, this Twitter user put it pretty well in a response to one of my posts there.
What do you think?
There is so much propaganda in our modern media ecosystem that it almost feels like we are sifting through the targeted mind control to find the things we originally set out to find (knowledge, entertainment, interpersonal connection, etc).
We are in a new age of propaganda. It’s important to recognize when it’s being done to you.
Let me know what you think!
