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EnTerr
Roku Guru

What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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/videos

It'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.
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21 REPLIES 21
belltown
Roku Guru

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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.
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renojim
Community Streaming Expert

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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.
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renojim
Community Streaming Expert

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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?
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

"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 Smiley LOL

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.
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renojim
Community Streaming Expert

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

Well today RAF seems to be totally broken. My calls to getAds are returning NO ads!

-JT
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belltown
Roku Guru

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

"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.
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EnTerr
Roku Guru

Re: What's with RAF and leg shaving?!

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>
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