I notice something strange over the last week - and that is that the RAF-served ads i see in my app are all about shaving legs - see the 30sec spots here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCkih ... g1A/videosIt's always the same thing - over and over and over again. And then some. "Schick Skintimate" present “Ready, Shave, Shine” - a fake-blond gal frowns at her razor, then texts and starts having disturbing Schick-branded visions - then ends with "Rock Your Legs".That's not normal, Doc - is it?!I can't imagine i am doing it wrong, because it's the simplest sequence - get Roku_Ads(), getAds(), showAds(pods) - that has been working all along.

I think this is normal. Every time I play Pathogen 2, it tries to convince me to shave my legs. If I complied every time, I'd be shaving down to the bone marrow by now.

Today I'm seeing one and only one ad - The Lowe's 4th of July ad. :?:

So we should assume RokuCo's ad inventory is running thin/empty?Or bug in RAF 1.7?Repeating the same ad over and over (and over) again is bordering on viewer harassment, can't say am pleased.

I'm not too happy either. I wonder if it has something to do with the start of a new month and/or quarter.-JT

For me it's been a solid week of leg shaving, till today.But today i observe something stranger: the public channel is reliably stuck peddling "Lowe's 4th of July" - where the beta/pvt channel prefers "Walt Disney World" (or may show soccer ad). Now they both use exactly the same build/bundle right now, bit-for-bit. Whence the difference?!Was v1.7 of RAF just released, i did not keep track of versioning?

What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

belltown
Roku Guru
9 years ago
I think this is normal. Every time I play Pathogen 2, it tries to convince me to shave my legs. If I complied every time, I'd be shaving down to the bone marrow by now.
renojim
Community Streaming Expert
9 years ago
Today I'm seeing one and only one ad - The Lowe's 4th of July ad. :?:
EnTerr
Roku Guru
9 years ago
So we should assume RokuCo's ad inventory is running thin/empty?
Or bug in RAF 1.7?

Repeating the same ad over and over (and over) again is bordering on viewer harassment, can't say am pleased.
renojim
Community Streaming Expert
9 years ago
I'm not too happy either. I wonder if it has something to do with the start of a new month and/or quarter.

-JT
EnTerr
Roku Guru
9 years ago
For me it's been a solid week of leg shaving, till today.

But today i observe something stranger: the public channel is reliably stuck peddling "Lowe's 4th of July" - where the beta/pvt channel prefers "Walt Disney World" (or may show soccer ad). Now they both use exactly the same build/bundle right now, bit-for-bit. Whence the difference?!

Was v1.7 of RAF just released, i did not keep track of versioning?
EnTerr
Roku Guru
9 years ago
"RokuJoel" wrote:
I've sent an email to the ad team.

This is a hairy situation. [...] This may have to do with razor thin industry margins. I'm sure it will all gel in the end.

Hairy situation + shaving gel + razor = "Skintimate" margins, indeed! The shoe seems to fit

Hmmm... someone once said "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity".
[spoiler=quote:2bv2r2vo][/spoiler:2bv2r2vo]
I am thinking... if i were to start selling "disable ads" as a premium upgrade, i ought to sell a good deal of "lemonade" given the "lemons" that RAF is handing right now. There is some irony to how self-regulating such model would be - the worse the ads, the more willing users would be to pay to get rid of them. And vice versa - if ads become any good (captivating, useful/meaningful, non-repetitive, targeted etc), less inclined people would be to avoid.
renojim
Community Streaming Expert
9 years ago
Well today RAF seems to be totally broken. My calls to getAds are returning NO ads!

-JT
belltown
Roku Guru
9 years ago
"renojim" wrote:
Well today RAF seems to be totally broken. My calls to getAds are returning NO ads!

-JT

On the Video Poker channel I'm seeing two ads at the beginning: ad 1 of 2 is the Lowes ad; ad 2 of 2 is also the Lowes ad. I'm not sure which I prefer -- watching one leg shave ad, or two Lowes ads.
EnTerr
Roku Guru
9 years ago
Ah, i was going to ask about that. I noticed such behaviors over the weekend - often not serving ads, figured that the Co. ad pool must be drained.
Today though, i was going to complain but had quick look at my logs and "only" slightly above 100 of the last 300 ad requests came up empty, so i was like "yeah ok, 34% ain't that bad". Your stats worse?

PS. belltown: "Nice little game you got there, eh? Be a shame if you did not pay for ad-protection and something were to happen..." </wise-guy>
renojim
Community Streaming Expert
9 years ago
I haven't checked in the last couple of hours, but what I was seeing was only the two Lowe's ads or nothing at all. Unfortunately I throw away duplicate ads at the next ad break, so when I see the same ad(s) at the next break I keep calling getAds up to 10 times trying to get something different. If I only get duplicates with additional empty pods, I display nothing. It's not unusual to get two Lowe's ads and eight pods with no ads or, worse, 10 pods with no ads. 😞 I'm trying to keep my users from seeing the same ad(s) over and over again, but I'm going to have change that so that if Roku only wants to give me one or two ads I just go ahead and show them ad nauseam (pun intended).

-JT