Startup buys porn ads to try to reach Sam Altman

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/pink-cow/

by x43b • 11 years ago

19 17 11 years ago

I've read a bunch of articles about a "clever hack" the author used to get into an accelerator where they hyper-target a facebook ad to one or two influential people to convince them to accept their application. I imagine it's being done a lot now.

I wonder what percentage of the ads sama sees while browsing facebook linkedin or twitter are hyper-targeted specifically towards him.

mkagenius• 11 years ago

Hmm.. makes me think, there should be a way to delist yourself from getting targeted albeit paid one. Kind of paid version vs free version.

FabianBeiner• 11 years ago

I read that article, too. But it was done with LinkedIn targeting and it didn't receive the recipient directly, but he got a lot of messages from friends. So in the end, they got the contact. Don't recall the URL, though. :(

minimaxir2• 11 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9957083 ?

brudgers• 11 years ago

There are lots of accelerators out in the wild. Some of them are modelled on reality TV with prizes and judges and montization schemes based on something other than billions of dollars in capital appreciation for the portfolio companies.

In such accelerators, there is a lot of emphasis on SEO and pitch decks as the road to value rather than products. Sometimes this correlates with selling SEO expertise and pitch deck coaching as components of an accelerator's revenue stream. Despite these reducing runway. Facebook or pornhub campaigns might demonstrate suitability for that type of program.

On the other hand, press releases are not a viable minimum product for most companies.

krapp2• 11 years ago

Bothering Sam Altman As A Service?

extc• 11 years ago

On a related off-topic topic, does anyone know why AdWords doesn't allow super specific keywords? i.e. if keywords get under X hits then AdWords won't enable them even if there might be a few perfect people who will enter those keywords.

totoroisalive• 11 years ago

So the reader of the tech blog The Next Web go to pornhub without ublock or adblock?

untog• 11 years ago

I'm quite sure very many people do.

_sentient• 11 years ago

Aside from being something of a personal violation, this behavior is also front-row evidence to a lack of creativity.

Do not pass go, and do not collect $12,000.

moubarak• 11 years ago

well we don't know what the startup idea is, perhaps it's related to pxxxhub ads. if not then i totally agree with you.

minimaxir2• 11 years ago

This is what happens when startup culture turns "growth hacking" into a fetish. (pun intended)

meira• 11 years ago

And this "culture" keeps surprising us. The awkward part is that a lot of people find it "GENIUS!11!!111!!"

Dylan16807• 11 years ago

There are many problems with what they did, but I would not list using money inefficiently as one of them. Unless you're anti-advertising as a general concept. Weird.

krapp2• 11 years ago

Do you know what Be a Pink Cow even is? I've read the few linked articles about this, and watched their video, looked around on their Medium page, and they've obviously been mentioned in Wired now, and I have no idea.

They appear to have spent money to prompt random porn viewers to send Sam Altman to a video begging him to pay more attention to them... on a site with no other information at all about who they are and what they do and why anyone should even care. They have all this traffic from Pornhub and Wired and TheNextWeb which is doing them no good, and the only fact anyone seems to know about them is that they seem like nice people, if inept at self promotion. That does seem inefficient at best.

dennisgorelik• 11 years ago

In the context of it being a porn ad it's funny how she dives down from the screen (multiple times).

Was it intentional?

chrismcb• 11 years ago

He claims they are looking for people who spend their money efficiently. Signs to me like this ad is getting more band for its buck than other ads. Signs efficient to me.

Startup buys porn ads to try to reach Sam Altman

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