I love donuts. If I were a superhero, a donut would be my kryptonite.
A jet with hundreds of passengers could lose an engine. I’d fly to it, be helping it land safely, spot a donut store hundreds of miles away, and dart off to grab some jelly-filled thing dusted with powdered sugar. The plane would crash. People would die. Loved ones would cry on the news. Oh, the humanity! But, hey – powered jelly.
That’s how much I love donuts.
You be right on the money if you guessed that I have strong opinions on taurus shaped pastries.
Sullivan Street Bakery bombolonis take pastry, jelly, and sugar to new heights. No, I don’t get money if you buy from them. Watching Krispy Kreme convey their donuts around the store in Times Square would stun Mesmer himself. A Tim Horton’s dipped in maple made where zip codes have letters is an unbeatable daily.
Which brings me to Dunkin’ Donuts and the backstory of this story.
Dunkin’s donuts were never my go-to. I ate them because I was jonesing and there was one nearby.
A few years ago, I had one. It was stale and crunchy and disappointed. I chalked it up to being late in the day and assumed it had been sitting. A few weeks later, the same thing. Another lousy donut eating experience. But, it was much earlier in the day and I couldn’t excuse it.
I didn’t go back to Dunkin’ for a long while after that. When I did, yuck. I guessed they had gone from deep frying to baking or started using good-for-you ingredients. Donuts are supposed to be carby stodgy; not boring stodgy.
Dunkin’ was dead to me.
Yesterday, I found out the real reason.
Dunkin’ owners could make donuts one of three ways: (1) in-store, (2) in groups with other stores, or (3) by reheating frozen ones head office would ship you.
Guess which one is the cheapest? No. 3. Which, according to reviews, taste, “stale and crunchy.” Hmmmm.
The greed of adding a cheap option destroyed the brand. To save a few cents, Dunkin’ lost my customer dollars a long time ago.
Sure, greed can screw up a $2 pastry at a chain of franchised coffee shops. Surely, the fourth most valuable company on earth won’t succumb to greed over quality?
Um.
Google is the most awesome lowercase-c cooper ever. They built a barrel that fish jump into and jump out of to serve themselves fileted in a beurre blanc sauce. In real terms, publishers jump in. Ads jump out.
We search Google 8.5 billion times a day. Google is site we visit the most. The second most trafficked site is YouTube. Google owns that too. Together, Google and YouTube got 199B visits last month.
You’d think the two sites we visit the most that have the best ad system ever would be enough.
**SPOILER** It wasn’t.
In a sense, Google added franchises to their company-owned stores. Because: network. If you visited a Google franchise site, Google would show you an add. Google got a cut of all sales.
Google’s network didn’t include Facebook or Amazon or anything you’ve heard of. Because: those folks can sell their own ads. So, Google added sites like freewebnovel.com. Lots and lots and lots of them. Because: to make any kind of impact on nearly TWO HUNDRED BILLION visits, you need lots of sites that get 27 visits.
It’s stale, crunchy donuts all over again. Google could sell lots of good quality stuff. Instead they diluted their inventory with junk to sell a little more and hoped no one would notice.
**SPOILER** People noticed. Specially the people who used video ads.
Unskippable ads were skippable. Audible ads were mute. Press to play ads started on their own. Ads destined for name-brand sites went to Schlock & Co.
Just like I noticed when Dunkin’ sold me crappy donuts. I excused it once or twice. After a while, I just stopped buying from a network that disappoints me.
Google has disappointed a lot of people. The WSJ says 80% of the ads Google served violated their own policies. Those ads are worth billions and people want refunds. Some are even more upset.
If I read about the bad experiences happening to others, I’d think, hmmm… If friends told me, I’d worry. It happened to me. We got screwed.
Earlier this summer, we asked Google to show people ads when they searched for a narrow term used by very few people. From Monday to Friday, Google showed the ad seven times. One person clicked on it. We paid the few bucks for the click and praised Google for finding relevant needles in fields of haystacks. Then, on Friday night, a little after midnight eastern, our ad was seen 76,000 times – on YouTube and “other video sites.” It took four hours to magically get enough clicks to exhaust our budget.
Because: greed. Google’s sort-of franchisees weren’t Google. They didn’t bake the goods in house. They gamed the system for a few extra bucks.
The other day, Google said they removed 143,000 sites from the network in 2022. Because: violating policies. Don’t ask how 143,000 sites could violate policy.
A few days before that, Google changed the name of their of their network from In-Stream Ads to Skippable Ads. Wait? Skippable. Hmmm.
Which reminds me. In 2019, Dunkin’ dropped Donuts from their name. They say they’re a, “beverage-led company.” You know how I feel about dopey mission statements.
I’ll say this again, because it’s not just food or tech. It’s everything.
Adding low-quality stuff can destroy your brand, cost you customers, and make you look stupid.
Like Dunkin’, we’re never going to use Google again. In fact, I asked the AI Bard to create this verse in iambic pentameter to close this important story about quality for us.