Okay, Clive, can you give me morose? How about somber? Okay, now we need you to do angst ridden. There’s some brooding in this next scene. Can you pull off silently seething? The best way to approach this character is to treat him as a confidently annoyed stoic. Can you handle this?

Years before Netflix or anyone else posed a threat, Blockbuster was hard at work killing itself. A brief history of the chain below.

In 1997, for the first time ever, the video rental industry was in trouble. Though demand was high, fewer people were renting because new releases were in short supply. The reason? The movie studios charged Blockbuster and its competitors a hefty $65 per VHS tape. If they bought too many of one title, it was a multi-million dollar write-off. Instead, they chose to buy too few, figuring most people would get over it and rent something else. Only thing was, many customers left the chain all together, and nearly 30% of those who returned were still walking away empty-handed.

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As you read this, thousands of 18-34 year old men are watching Tampax commercials. Not because they want to, but because television is an imprecise medium that makes it hard to get the right ads to the right people. As a result, we’ve been conditioned over decades to expect irrelevance at the commercial break.

But wasn’t the Internet, and in particular, social media, supposed to turn that tide? Take Facebook—they know more about my day-to-day life than my parents do, and surely enough to serve me ads that I’d find remotely useful. But they’re dropping the ball. Big time.

Check out this little gem, currently smack dab in the middle of my news feed: an ad for MarineCFO. From their website: (Yeah, I clicked) “MarineCFO is the leading provider of on-vessel, marine operations, personnel, fleet maintenance and financial management solutions to the marine transportation industry.”

Will someone out there besides Google please get their shit together?

Update: Robert over at GrokDotCom picked this up, and some of the comments over there got me thinking. The bottom line is this: While a poorly-targeted TV ad reflects badly on the advertiser (and not the network), a poorly-targeted Facebook ad reflects badly on the network (and not the advertiser). The reason is that Facebook integrates advertising WITHIN their programming (my news feed) while the TV network traditionally keeps it separate (product placement aside).

In this sense, Facebook has a much greater responsibility than TV networks to make their ads relevant. When they don’t (as in the above example) they compromise their product experience, and damage their brand, all in exchange for a few pennies per CPM. 

Because having your own blog means the right to posting videos exactly like this: the Spanish version of “Goin’ Crazy” from David Lee Roth’s 1986 album, Sonrisa Salvaje. Watch it for the outfit, if nothing else.