scott, i have the flu, so am a lil slow on the uptake today. second screenshot about time and whenu is from your archives of yesteryear's deceptive shitake. And today's highlighted spam scam slam is that little line that says "Unread Message (1)" stuff... is that a google adwords ad built to look like it's something other than an ad? If I'm getting it right (sorry, don't use gmail yet), shame on reunion.com, but serious shame on G themselves.
Since when does "Unread Message (1)" qualify as a good ad title?
Hideously good find.
cool blog got a new site
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Good find Scott - and the comparison is very good. Over the years we have seen some pretty deceptive practices being called "creative marketing" at times. In a world where conversion doesn't matter...all the ads have to do is makes someone click.
I tried to dig up an old speech I gave a few years ago, cause I had pictures of some good examples similar to what you have... but couldn't find it... the premise though was about deceptive ads and some examples... off the top of my head I remember:
"Click here you are a winner"
"Your computer may be infected with a virus, click here"
Ads that are designed to look exactly like a Windows System popup, where the "X" in the top right corner doesn't close the ad, but instead clicks through to an ad.
These ads tend to find their way onto popuplar sites like "Lyrics", "music downloads".... things where the amount of traffic is very high - but where better marketing methods such as Affiliate Marketing do not work very well due to the intention of the user (come to site, get lyric, leave)... So these sites often use Ad Networks to monetize - leaving the Advertiser to try to come up with ways to increase click thru count.
I found a few examples just by browsing around - but didn't want to post them here didn't know if you wanted them - so posted on my blog you can take a look if you want. If you browse around on sites like the ones that I mentioned above though, you'll see plenty of your own examples.... and not suprisingly they are served very often by the same 2 Ad networks...
Anyhow - I agree with you - both Google and Reunion.com should be way above this... considering Google already has a "deceptive ad" policy for PPC ads.
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We affiliate marketers have spent the past week noodling the concept of undisclosed links and duping users thanks to the keynote address at Affiliate Summit.
Being a newly converted gmail user, I grabbed this screenie this morning.
That's a damn creative advert, but deceptive, no?
Reminds me of the old drive-by download trickery from the spyware guys like WhenU:
Great ROI in that campaign, I bet, reunion.com. What's the matter, Google doesn't allow the blink tag?