Wednesday, December 6, 2017

"Wish ads are so unusual that they’ve developed a cult following"

TDB:
Wish has long been a large and dedicated advertiser on Facebook, quickly embracing new ad formats as fast as Facebook can release them.

“Facebook’s ad team has been blown away by how much more sophisticated Wish is as an advertiser than literally any other company, according to multiple sources,” Jason Del Rey wrote in ReCode.

In 2015 alone, Wish spent around $100 million on Facebook ads and was the No. 1 advertiser on both Facebook and Instagram during the 2015 holiday season, according to app data startup Sensor Tower.

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It was only a matter of months before things spiralled out of control.

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“It was really embarrassing for us,” Raoul said. “We spend so much time worrying about what ads we’re showing our users and we do so much to limit them, but somehow these crazy ads got through to our users. We don’t want to say no ads from Wish. It’s just these particularly weird products we want to stop showing up.”

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Facebook doesn’t particularly want to show these strange items either though, because ultimately they aren’t driving sales and some items even violate the company’s guidelines.