I have a somewhat Hispanic-sounding last name, but don’t speak Spanish at all. Plex, however, has decided to bombard me with tons of Spanish-speaking ads for no good reason. It’s annoying, and frankly, it feels more than a little bit racist. I have a feeling that if I was named Smith or Jones, they wouldn’t be making this particular mistake. It doesn’t even make commercial sense — it’s not like I’m going to buy something because of an ad in a foreign language that I don’t speak or understand.
Why is Plex assuming I speak Spanish when there is no valid reason to do so? Is there any way I can get it to stop doing this? This is getting to be a major annoyance.
Plex doesn’t put the ads. The ads are paid for by whatever company is advertising to the channel. I will be watching English programming and get a laundry detergent ad in Spanish. If Colgate toothpaste said to broadcast the ad in German, you would probably get a German ad.
Plex doesn’t even know your last name, nor do the ad playout networks.
As @TheLivingBubba already pointed out, this is almost solely up to the ad distribution networks. If they figure that your approximate region (which is onyl determined by your IP address, which can be wrong sometimes) is rich on hispanic population, then you may see a lot of Spanish language ads.
It is also possible that there were no other bids for ad placement on this channel, hour time, and geographical region.
I’m sure they are also mapping your IP address and any other information they can get on you with the massive third party profiles that advertisers keep on us.
I frequently get Spanish language ads across a variety of streaming sites and I don’t speak Spanish or even have a Spanish name. However, multiple people in other countries including Brazil, the Netherlands, and other countries often use my gmail address to sign up for a variety of sites.
Comcast sometimes even sends me mail ads in Spanish. I’m a Comcast customer and never gave them a reason to think I spoke Spanish.
So granted the original poster is incorrect in his assumption about why he’s getting the ads, but this seems like a distraction from, you know, an actual reasonable user objection.
If the product is filled to the brim with bad advertising (politically offensive, badly inappropriate, annoying, volume mixed wrong), users should have some refuge from that. They should be able to flag bad ads, or advertisers. They should have an option to pay to not receive ads. It is a bad thing if one of your users thinks the program is bad and not worth using because you are “bombarding” him with stuff he doesn’t like. At a minimum, Plex should have ad sales staff that work to remove low quality ads from circulation in concert with ad distribution partners. If ad distribution partners persistently show bad ads, get better ad distribution partners.
People who make money off ads owe it to people who are subjected to ads to do right by them. Isn’t this obvious? The point of going to work every day is to try to do something that improves the world in some way, by making someone happier. The point of ads is to support a product that brings joy to people who watch it while delivering value for the firms paying to have their ads shown. This scenario does neither.
Trying to make the conversation be about something else is, I think, a missed opportunity for good customer service.
We do when we can but ads are literally bought and sold in microseconds. We would need to know date and time what someone was specifically watching so we can report a specific ad.
We are not a big enough company to do that. The free content would not exist at all or that cost would be too expensive.
Well, there you have it miaci5, the official staff response on this is that the company does not plan to implement any mechanism to report or remove irrelevant or offensive ads; does not have the bandwidth to have their staff proactively try to get better ads; and does not plan to offer you an option to pay to remove ads.
It sounds like the official position Plex as a company takes on this is that if you are being bombarded by irrelevant and annoying ads, you should just not watch Plex.
The only way Advertisers for Germany pay to show their ads in German is for them to know more German folks are watching. If folks don’t they won’t provide them since they will feel there is no market to advertise to. Those as spots will then be taken by anyone who wants to pay for them in whatever language. If no advertising happens then the service probably simply won’t exist in Germany at all.
In general, we do not individually choose or control ads that get shown during playback on our free, ad-supported on-demand and live TV content. Instead, individual ads are dynamically selected by ad partners based on advertisers “bidding” for placement as well as other factors. We do pass numerous data points to the ad market partners to help in the choosing of relevant ads, including language of the content being played, genre, general location of the user, and more.
However, it’s possible that some advertisers may still choose to try and have their ads shown, even when it might not seem ideal (such as an ad in a language that does not match the content being played or a political campaign the user doesn’t agree with). We do not prevent a company or advertiser from choosing to whom they advertise, even in cases where it might seemingly not be the best fit.
He’s saying he has a very generic-sounding address (like john.smith@gmail.com) and people are picking it as a fake email address to use on some signup to use an unrelated site.
I’m glad to find that other Plex users are also greatly annoyed by this problem. I do appreciate being able to stream free ad-supported content on Plex, but if companies advertising through these services don’t respect the audience when they have the data at their disposal, I don’t respect them either and will never buy their products.
I am literally watching Hell’s Kitchen since 6pm EST in North Carolina. This state is ENGLISH speaking and with EVERY AD BREAK I get ONE English ad and 5 or more Spanish! I just downloaded this app today and I have multiple apps I pay for so, to be honest, I will probably delete it after posting this on here. Simple because y’all aren’t taking us seriously and are really belittling those of us who are offended by this! I’m gonna tell y’all one thing, Spanish is not the “global language”. So if you put those ads on Spanish shows or movies that’s perfectly fine but to put in on ENGLISH speaking ones is a great way to piss off 95% of your consumers! That being said, I’m gone from here.
We do not choose the ads that appear. Whomever chooses to pay for the ad slot gets the ad slot. As I mentioned above it ad space is bid on by computers at ad servers we do not own every micro second. We literally have no idea which ad will be chosen next as one ad is playing. Advertisers who may have ads in English still choose to set up their ad server to put up the Spanish one instead. We do not choose that for them and cannot tell them which ad they choose to put in that slot.
I am simply telling you how the ad servers actually work. If you take that as belittling or are offended then I can’t do anything about that.
You would THINK the top concern wouldn’t be the language the ads are in but rather the LOUDNESS of them. It’s funny because Plex Server is well known to decrease the volume output of our films but no sooner we watch Plex LiveTV and BOOOM! The ads during the commercial breaks can wake up the baby, cause someone to jump scare or stub their toe attempting to find the remote to mute them!
So, again, to be clear, you have a user here who is talking about how bad their experience is and how it makes them not want to use Plex, and you think the most important takeaway from that is to explain details about programmatic ad bidding to them. To what end? Do you think they’re going to have the takeaway “Oh, I was totally wrong about these incredibly annoying ads, now I like these ads, excellent, I love using Plex” or do you think the takeaway is “Okay, this employee from this company doesn’t care that my experience is miserable and is instead lecturing me about the way they choose to sell ads”. Unreal.
