Those Shifty Intracontent Ads

I check out Facebook more times than I care to admit. That’s right friends, I do check out Facebook even though I say I don’t but for the wrong reasons and no it’s not to stalk people. Honestly, most people are not that interesting. There are just so many selfies, photos of your dog, cat, chicken or whatever animal you have that I can take. No, I don’t go on Facebook for that. I go on Facebook for meaningful content, when someone has something of substance to say, or an announcement of a new baby in the family, new house they bought, and so on. I’ll pay attention to that. However, I also go on Facebook for a weird guilty pleasure of mine, something called the suggested post, the ones that start with 10 times this happened or 20 things you didn’t know about this thing. The post usually takes you to another website that features the article and it is here that something horrible, sinister, and downright evil lives.

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We live with advertising, from billboards to commercials to emails and on and on. I get it, I embrace it, I’m a marketer myself and I understand that we need it. How are we going to know how awesome the next iPhone is unless they tell us, right? Well there is one type of advertising that infuriates me. It’s a horrible strategy that makes me cringe. It’s the INTRACONTENT ad! It appears when you’re scrolling down an article and just before you’re about to click the “next” button at the bottom, an ad suddenly appears and you accidentally click on it. Those sneaky buggers! The worst part is it’s never something that you’re interested in, NEVER! They don’t even target you correctly. I’m usually impressed when I see a car ad, or a guitar ad, or even a lawn mower ad because they hit the target. I feel like my mobile device or computer knows me, but when they trick me into clicking on an ad for Claritin-D. WTF!
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I don’t know how to get a hold of the demons who are implementing these tactics but from one marketer to another, please stop doing this. It’s not effective. Oh, I was just reading “20 things you may have missed on Robocop” but then I accidentally clicked on an ad for tough acting Tenactin, well I guess I’ll go buy some right now said nobody who just wanted to know about Robocop!