We’ve all been there: It’s Saturday afternoon. You’re feeling adventurous. You search “homemade ramen recipes.” You can already tell they look too difficult. You refine your search to “homemade ramen recipes easy.” You click on the first link that pops up.

But, little do you know, you’ve just embarked on a transformative, heartwarming journey akin to Bilbo freaking Baggins. It goes a little something like this:

“As I sit by the hearth this cozy afternoon, I can’t help but reflect on the extensive role ramen has played in my life, especially during my formative years. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘ramen’ as ‘thin Asian noodles, usually served in a light soup.’ When I simply hear the word, I endure a Pavlovian response wherein I am instantly transported back to the quaint kitchen of my childhood home.”

You keep scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling. Gorgeous photography. But still no recipe.

“My mother used to warm up a fresh Maruchan Ramen packet on the stove, chicken flavored of course. Our family secret, passed down for generations, is that she would only put in half of the spice packet, which was kind of her signature move. This is a heart-healthy, low-sodium tradition that I’ve successfully carried into the next chapter of my life, and I would love to pass this on to all of my glorious readers.”

So you close it out, open another link, and—lo and behold!—another heartwarming life story, no less than 1,000 words. It’s like every food blogger is trying to meet the minimum word count of their high school English essay. You just want to know what ingredients to put on your grocery list, but instead, you feel as though you just walked out of a marathon heart-to-heart with a mommy blogger from Idaho.

Still, as advertisers ourselves, we understand the ulterior motives behind these bloggers’ saccharine narratives. And, honesty, I don’t blame them; like any goods or services, recipes are a commodity. These excessive stories not only generate ad revenue as you scroll endlessly, but they also boost their site’s SEO with hallowed original content. There’s no such thing as a free lunch recipe.

Still, I can’t imagine that a brand can get very far stringing along its audience. When I close out of these recipe pages, I usually just feel frustrated, a little annoyed, and ready to order takeout. Sure, you’ve gotta generate ad revenue to pay the (grocery) bills; but it’s critical to find a way to do so without sacrificing your consumer-brand relationship.

Solving this comes back to understanding customer motives. If someone is in a rush trying to find a recipe, frantically scrolling down the page with flour-covered fingers, chances are they won’t respond very well to a life story. However, if these SEO-thirsty buckets of content included useful information such as adjustments to personalize the recipe to our liking, or auto-generated recipe suggestions that would pair well (and keep the user’s eyes on the website even longer), the audience would likely see the brand in a positive light.

Whether it’s a recipe, video, social media channel, promoted article, or—you know—a blog post like this, it’s all about making people want to consume your content. Get creative—and don’t send them on a fruitless quest for ramen.