Someone looks at a pair of shoes one time. One time. They don’t even add them to the cart; they just hover around for a second because the color is nice and the price is questionable- maybe it’s not that bad of a price either. Then, somehow, for the next two weeks, those shoes are everywhere. No exaggeration here either. They’re in the sidebar. They’re in an app. They’re interrupting a video. They’re sitting in a banner ad while that person is trying to read a recipe for pasta sauce or apple strudel or whatever else, which feels super unnecessary here too.
And okay, yeah, businesses need to advertise. You have no choice; marketing is essential to all businesses here, and of course, they do. Nobody’s pretending customers are going to magically remember every brand they’ve ever glanced at; it’s not how it works; everyone knows that. But clearly here, there’s a point where an ad stops feeling like a reminder and starts feeling like a brand has followed someone and just constantly follows. It’s extremely unnerving here.
But you own a business; that’s what business owners do here, they market, right? A brand can have a great product, the whole thing, and still make people feel weird before they ever buy anything. Because customers don’t experience advertising as some separate little business activity happening in a spreadsheet somewhere like you probably do. Actually, you probably experience it just like them, getting pushed with ads. You don’t really like it, right? Well, they don’t either.
Nobody Wants to Feel Like a Half-Finished Checkout
And what does this even mean, though? Well, there’s something especially irritating about being treated like an abandoned cart with legs. Sure, some people are honestly intentional with doing an abandoned cart, assuming they’re actually shopping, because some businesses will hand out coupon codes within 24 hours, so that makes total sense here. But what happens when someone leaves your website? Well, that makes you look bad.
Like, please relax. The issue isn’t always the ad itself. Sometimes the offer is fine. The product is fine. The copy might even be fine. But what gives about this experience? This experience of emailing them (tracking cookies are involved in this too), them seeing your product basically everywhere, just creates weird vibes where your brand might not even be trusted at that point.
Desperate Ads Make a Brand Look Less Confident
Well, yes, some brands somehow have too much money to spend on advertising, where in person and in every little crevice online, you see that brand (cough cough Temu). It can be unnerving. Now, it can work to do this, but you should keep in mind that being pushy can also make you less confident and less trustworthy too.
And a big one you often see nowadays is that some ads have this nervous energy to them. Everything is urgent. Everything is a limited-time offer. Everything is the last chance, final call, don’t miss out, hurry now, cart closing, deal ending, clock ticking, please please please buy something. Jokes aside, you see this a lot, right? You see that urgency that technically shouldn’t be there, because it’s literally every week, so clearly this can’t be credible here.
People can feel that desperation, even if they don’t name it that way. They may just think the company seems pushy or cheap, or not very trustworthy. That’s especially risky for brands selling higher-priced products or services because people usually want a sense of steadiness before spending real money.
And there’s the Customer Experience
Well, at least the customer side of the screen, which you could technically label as customer experience or even the customer journey here. A lot of ad problems seem to happen when the brand gets too focused on internal goals and forgets the customer is just trying to live their life. The business wants more clicks. The campaign needs more conversions. The budget has to perform.
The team wants to prove the channel works. It makes sense, from a business standpoint, that all of this is absolutely fair. But on the other side, there’s a person trying to check the weather, read an article, watch a video, compare prices, or take a five-minute break from work without being followed by some ad for something that they might not actually buy. In fact, they might try to just block your brand or mark it as spam or “do not recommend” or whatever else here.
Which is exactly why campaign planning can’t just be about placement and budget. It has to include restraint, timing, frequency, creative variety, and basic human judgment. Actually, with this, you might even want to take a good look at managed services advertising here too, since this can even be a good choice for brands that need campaigns to feel intentional instead of scattered, overly repetitive, or strangely aggressive (better in the long run too).
Say Goodbye to Trust
Well, sometimes its immediately, sometimes it gets chipped away by tiny little annoyances that stack up. For example, something like an ad that feels too personal. A message that shows up too often, maybe a discount that feels fake because it’s somehow always ending tonight (which was literally just mentioned above, and yes, this one happens all the time too). Oh, and maybe even a retargeting campaign that won’t take a hint. So, from a distance, these ads don’t seem like a big deal or anything, but when they’re together, well, they start teaching customers something about the brand.
They teach people that the brand is pushy or automated, or whatever other negative perception that’s out there, and that makes you look bad. Maybe the first impression was fine, but ten impressions now? Well, goodbye to that person being your customer.
Better Ads Have Some Manners
So, it should feel like it has some awareness of the person see the ad you made. That means not overdoing the retargeting and all those other things that customers hate about those types of ads. Really, don’t push it- maybe once or twice at most. Afterwards, you’re most likely just a nuisance.
