A recent post read: Discovery CEO David Zaslav, speaking at the conference, said that despite the large content library that Discovery owns, viewers are unlikely to find any of it on line in the near future. I had to investigate and was quite surprised by what I “discovered”. When I visited Discovery.com and the homepage loaded, it was covered in advertisements for Maxi pads. Although I am a female, and they do track demographic information (see Privacy Policy bullet 4 (four) under (2) Non-Personally Identifiable Information ), any demographic information that could be tracked via my PC or Browser would Identify me as a 72 year old male, by design. 😉
That is strike one. Having paid close attention to how and what is advertised at me over the years, and being a marketer and a technologist who is known for intensive QA (Quality Assurance) processes – it is clear that no one is actually checking to make sure that the campaigns that are going out make sense and/or that the targeting is working correctly.
OK, homepage is one thing – I made my way through the site to track down a long form video “full episode” on the Discovery.com site – I found something that was even more bizarre.
There are only two Programs left in long form, so I navigated over to Prototype This!: Robotic Firefighter Assistant and as the page loaded, I found all the ads were also pointing at a different demographic than what I had expected – so what is with the baby products and feminine hygiene obsession?
