For the Love of God, I Don’t Want Whiter Teeth or a Flatter Stomach
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For the Love of God, I Don’t Want Whiter Teeth or a Flatter Stomach
Who’s to blame for these hideous Internet ads that just won’t go away?
Posted Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 5:15pm
When the ads first descended upon us, they were stiflingly ugly. Scads of them started appearing all over the Internet a little less than a year ago, each one of them claiming their territory with a purposefully garish image. Some had yellow, rotting teeth. Some had flabby stomachs, with stretchmarks Photoshopped in. They promised wholesale physical change at the click of a button. Commit to a free trial and your life will never be the same.
Life-changing? No. Wallet-shaving? Yes. Once you click, you’ve likely ensnared yourself in a murky credit-card scam. Most of these ads are feeders for fraudulent companies who promise free products but then tack on all sorts of hidden fees. When you try to call and cancel the account, oftentimes nobody picks up the phone. Thus, you’re trapped. The ads aren’t just ugly; they’re unethical.
At first I thought the ads were a temporary nuisance, a stray meme that had organically emerged. But then they didn’t fade away. And they still haven’t. They are now both the billboards and wallpaper of our digital lives—impossible to avoid, impossible to ignore. They dominate even reputable news and social networking sites—The Big Money and Slate included—with their before and after shots; tempting us to click and find out how we, too, can trim that flab and whiten those canines.
Enough is enough. It’s time to play the blame game. This is the final piece of a trilogy on the underpinnings of the Internet scam industry. As in any trilogy, the prequels—“Get Your (Not-So) Free Grant Money!” and “The Anatomy of a Web Advertising Scam”—are good primers for this piece. Now it’s time to concern ourselves with who is—or should be—responsible for this dreck. We’ve compiled a list of suspects, and using TBM’s exclusive Rot Rating system, we’ll dole out the blame. The yellower the teeth, the guiltier the party.
The economy
It’s the recession’s fault these ads are showing up in the first place. Marquee advertisers got skittish when the recession hit, reducing their ad budgets online and everywhere else. In the print world, this means thinner magazines. In the online world, it means crappier ads.
Flat stomach from Getty Creative Images.
Comments
Dentist
Remember that excessive intake of fluoride can harm your teeth. Being a
very important element for our dental health, fluoride and its levels
in your body should be kept under control.
I agree the ads are getting
I agree the ads are getting rediculous. Granted some are half decent and have been getting through. Trouble is, I've already got a big willy, my breasts are ample, the cupboard is stocked with Viagra, my insurance isn't up for renewal, and I don't trust stock tips from anyone other than the group of monkeys with typewriters I use as consultants for that purpose.
Dan - water damage company
i'm just waiting for both
i'm just waiting for both ad-blocking software and <a href=http://factoidz.com/teeth-whitening-101-five-steps-to-greatly-whitened-teeth/>teeth whitening products that actually work</a>! the hell with all this other stuff.
make it too expensive
The scammer pay per click-through, so I try to click through regularly. I don't buy anything of course.
Ads
You took the words right out of my mouth. I am currently fighting a company who took an order from my child and now they want me to pay and pay but it is not going to happen. I will close my bank account first.
The Economy
Yes, the economy is a big factor in this.
For example, I do a lot of affiliate marketing right now although not with the bottom-of-the barrel offers and techniques you describe in this article.
Why? Because it's the only thing paying my mortgage and other bills right now since I don't have a 'real' job since being laid off earlier this summer.
Why? I can't find a job in my chosen field, computer programming, since most companies practice tacit age discrimination against programmers over age 30. So, I have had to turn my considerable web development skills to creating affiliate marketing websites rather than creating TPS reports at a big public corporation. I've created and deployed over 300 websites since being laid off.
Ironically, their ads are on this page
Pulse360 has ad space at the top right of this page advertising the same things the article despises!
These Affiliate Marketer Scams...
Yeah, these ads are terrible and lead to products that scam you into entering an automatic shipping program. The scam occurs because they don't disclose that even though you are getting a free trial of something, if YOU don't call to cancel, they bill you an outrageous amount of money (for a product that costs like $6 to make).
The FTC and the Government are actually starting to crack down on these Affiliate Marketers using the same laws that they apply to the actual companies.
There are TONS of Networks that provide these scam offers. Some of them are:
www.azoogleads.com
www.cxdigital.com
www.hydra.com
www.affiliate.com
www.clickbooth.com
You can also find communities of these people and get an idea about how much these people don't care about you getting scammed. They just want the commissions these networks and scam advertisers pay out.
Google, Yahoo! and a lot of other big advertising companies have started to ban these types of things from being advertised on their sites. Places like Pulse360 (one of the biggest promoters of these) will eventually get the microscope.
A lot of these folks think that what they're doing is not subject to the FTC advertising laws but they're wrong.
Hopefully we'll all get some relief soon.
filter 'em like email
As someone who uses email, filtering advertisements, both based on content and based on lists of scammers is an ongoing part of my life. Perhaps websites like "The Big Money" could similarly automatically filter the advertising that automatically appears on the site.
who sees ads?
Firefox + adblockplus extension -- I never see ads anymore. I learned about it through slate -- http://www.slate.com/id/2218386/