TIMMTI: Netflix

Day 3 - 3 Jan 2020

App: YouTube
Ad: Netflix
Targeted: No

YouTube, owned by Google, is one of the more unpredictable apps when it comes to ads.  I use it every day on my laptop, which has an ad-blocker installed, so I don't see ads on there, but if I'm using my phone or my Chromecast then ads do occasionally appear between videos.  Before getting to a video though, there's always an ad at the top of my YouTube app homepage, so let's take a look at that:

The ad is paid for by "New Sofa Search" and offers to find me "the best sofas on a clearance sale".  Now, I'm not looking for a new sofa at the moment, never mind the absolute unit in the photograph, and it would be wild for me to purchase one just for the sake of an experiment like this.  However, I've never clicked on a YouTube ad before, so I had a look to see where it went.  

I ended up on a dodgy-looking site called "bestsearches.net" which offered me a list of different sofa types ("modern sleeper sofa", "white sectional leather sofas" etc) and then when clicking on one of those, I go to a Yahoo search which shows me "ads related to" the category I selected.  I find this really curious - YouTube is owned by Google, but the advert on the homepage is for some sort of search engine which then leads to a Yahoo search which in turn is powered by Bing, aka Google's arch nemesis?  Utterly bizarre.

Anyway, as I said, I have no interest in purchasing a sofa so I moved on to the first video on my feed, or in this case the first 'YouTube mix', to see whether I can find an ad attached to it.  Eagle-eyed readers will spot that the first YouTube mix starts with a New Order song; it's apparently "My Mix" but YouTube honestly puts the same few videos at the top of every mix so it doesn't really matter.  For what it's worth, I didn't have a problem clicking to listen to Age Of Consent since it's one of my favourite songs of all time. 

There was no ad before the video, but there was a little yellow marker at the end of the video progress bar which I thought meant that an advert is placed there.  Apparently I was wrong because the playlist went right on to the next song.  After the third, I did see an advert but it was literally just the YouTube logo for a few seconds before moving on.  Finally, after 6 videos, I got an advert!

The ad was for Netflix, more specifically, it was an ad for Netflix containing the trailer for The Irishman.  The Irishman is a Scorsese movie that was released on Netflix a month or two ago and I already know a couple of things about it: it has some weird CGI to de-age the actors, it's a typical Scorsese gangster movie, and it's over three hours long.  I already know that this movie is not going to spark joy in me so I'm making the decision not to waste three hours of my life on it.

However, since I already have a Netflix subscription, lets instead see what it would like me to watch today.  For those of you not familiar with Netflix, when you open the site it has a 'Spotlight' show or movie that appears as the page header - usually it's something that's newly released and, more often than not, it's a "Netflix Original" aka something released exclusively on Netflix.  If you scroll on, it offers shows and movies under categories, like 'recently added', 'acclaimed UK TV shows', 'romantic movies' and so on.

Today, the Spotlight is on a show called You, which has just released a second series.

I haven't seen You before but I've heard of it.  It's a Netflix-exclusive series that I remember seeing advertised on the Spotlight when the first series came out, and I was mildly interested in watching but was watching a few other shows at the time.  I've also seen a bit of content around it recently - Buzzfeed quizzes, that sort of thing - to coincide with the new series.  I don't know much about the plotline but from what I understand it centres on a man who has decided to pursue a girl he likes by stalking her, and there was a bit of controversy when it first came out in case people thought it was a sweet love story and not genuinely terrifying.  

Netflix implores me to "Watch Season 2 Now", but as I'm new to the show, I started with Series 1 Episode 1.  Knowing even the small amount that I did about it, I was paying attention right away and looking for warning signs that this might not be the fluffy romantic story that I often turn to on Netflix (their teen movies are a guilty pleasure of mine) and it didn't take long for the episode to lay out its premise: this guy is bad news.  I won't say anything to spoil it for those who haven't seen any of it yet, but I will say that I enjoyed it and will definitely continue watching.  

I might have cheated a little bit by not watching what social media advertised to me, but this is my experiment and therefore my rules.  I don't know whether YouTube's advertising is particularly targeted.  On the one hand, the sofa search ad was pretty abstract and bizarre, and doesn't match up with anything I watch there, but I do use YouTube to watch movie trailers so it's possible that the Netflix ad was at least somewhat aimed at me.  I do occasionally watch Netflix on my computer through a browser that's linked to my Google account, so if it collects data on me then it knows I have a Netflix account and haven't watched The Irishman.  When it comes to Netflix, it wants me to think that its recommendations are targeted at me.  When I clicked on You it told me the series was a "99% match" for me, but honestly every time I see that 'match' bar it's usually set at 99% so I don't know whether I trust it.  I think the Spotlight is the same for every user so it might be coincidental that today it's offering me a show I actually wanted to watch, but if I get any more Netflix ads when I'm browsing my socials, maybe I'll get to test that theory.  

November / December update

The last movie I watched...
The Princess Switch (Netflix)

As much as I love my parents, one of my favourite times of the season is when they disappear off on holiday for a few days and leave me home alone to indulge in one of my guilty pleasures: cheesy Netflix teen rom-coms.  The Princess Switch actually ticks my brother's guilty pleasure box too, in that it doubles as a made-for-TV cheesy Christmas movie; hopefully he won't be disappointed that I watched it without him.  If you haven't seen the trailer for The Princess Switch, the premise is basically The Parent Trap, except instead of separated twin sisters, the protagonists (both played by Vanessa Hudgens, star of wholesome teen Disney movie High School Musical and less-than-wholesome teen exploitation movie Spring Breakers) are mere doppelgangers - one is a baker from Chicago, the other a Duchess days away from marrying a prince.  The set-up for the switch is quick and clumsy - baker Stacy's whole back-story is dropped on us in the first scene, nobody in the kingdom knows what the Duchess looks like because she's "camera-shy" - but the film still has its charm, containing all the sweetness of an old-fashioned Disney princess movie.  A lot of the story was predictable, but it took me a while to work out just how the romantic pairings were going to fall and how the fairytale ending would play out. 

On my record player...
The 1975 - Give Yourself A Try/Love It If We Made It (2018, Dirty Hit)

The 1975's third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, came out this week.  I haven't yet been able to decide whether I like it or not, although I suspect it'll grow on me, as my copies haven't arrived yet, but the special edition of their Q Magazine cover with a 7" of the first two songs they released from the album has arrived so that's currently on my timetable.  If you haven't heard them yet (where have you been?!), Give Yourself A Try is a noisy, fun powerpop song about Matty Healy's inner turmoil, and Love It If We Made It is a shouty protest song about the global turmoil surrounding him.  Basically, he's managed to cover every subject in the modern world on 2 sides of vinyl, which is pretty impressive.


My November 2018 playlist:

1. thank u, next - Ariana Grande
2. Corrine - Black Honey
3. World In My Eyes - Depeche Mode
4. Only Shallow - My Bloody Valentine
5. Here And Now - Ride
6. Palisade - Mineral
7. Your Silent Face - New Order
8. Herjazz - Huggy Bear
9. The Drowners - Suede
10. Brass In Pocket - Suede
11. Da Da Da - Elastica
12. Sincerity Is Scary - The 1975
13. Having A Blast - Green Day
14. The Ghost In You - The Psychedelic Furs
15. A Change Of Heart - The 1975
16. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme - The 1975

This week in my journal:

My theme this week is sort of a 'teenagers gone wild' thing - there's some freakishly-dressed young people appearing on a 90s talk show, Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord getting high outside in her pyjamas, and the goth girl skating in platform shoes (which I'm very envious of). 


I usually mention the last book I read on here too, but I've now spent about 4 months wading through The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh and still have 100 pages to go, so I'm not ready to talk about that yet.  However, instead I can offer...

The last book I listened to...
The Letters Of Sylvia Plath (BBC Radio 4 Book Of The Week, 2018)

I'm a huge fan of Sylvia Plath's letters, so I was delighted when Radio 4 did a second instalment of her words as Book Of The Week last week, this time focusing on the later period of her life when she had finished studying and met Ted Hughes (her student years and first breakdown were covered earlier in the year).  Her letters during this period are mostly upbeat and loving: she has a supportive husband, her poems are being accepted for publication and she becomes a mother.  Towards the end of the week, however, things take a dark turn when she uncovers Ted's adultery - the anguish in the letter that opens Friday's episode is gut-wrenching.  She simultaneously is lost and feels that she can't go on, and has days when she realises she must pick herself up and start a new life without him.  The last letter is from right before her suicide aged 30 and is heartbreaking.  I know I've blogged about this before, but I wish she'd carried on and was able to see how much of a hero she is to the women who followed her.