...lol... I was talking with my housemate about all this, he'd noticed the ad as well (having built himself exactly the same thing a few years ago). He laughed when I showed/told him why the ads were down.
Anyhow, some of you here would've seen me foist this image in the Jokes thread a few weeks ago...here it is again;
Like, no comment from myself, because the image enough is one that brings a chuckle to anyone who knows what they're looking at... AS IF a rewound MOT for the purpose of making an electric spot-welder, have ANYTHING to do with allegedly saving you up to 90% on electricity bills....we laugh at it, it's a joke, and anyone gullible or not savvy with electrical stuff will get duped of their money and believe the thing works 'coz it has flashing lights....we know the drill.
Time for another image ...here, I'm technically focusing on the thumbnail image of the youtube video ... watch it if you like foreign accents speaking English with rather unique annunciation/inflection (he still says "bloody hell" in the same way I feel it =)...
Get the picture?..maybe not, at least not how you'd immediately expect -- the first picture here, the joke, it identifies itself as an 'Ad', but nothing in or about that image says it's a google ad, now does it? Well it is, and google owns youtube.
So...we have a google ad displaying on ebay pages selling a so called power saving device (which is a scram/ripoff), using images like this, 'farmed' from youtube creators/contributors video thumbnails...nice little chopshop going on here, clear to see.
Now, I don't know the guy at all, but do admire his knowledge and sharing of same via youtube videos, and I'd make a reasonable guess he wouldn't exactly like his creative work, being used to proffer sale for a false gimmicky power saver device, so I did email him a FYI that this google ad via ebay was doing exactly that.
I got to thinking, and as mentioned 'some bay sellers' actually includes ebay themselves, because they're sellers of their site, should they be allowing such fraudulent ads on the ebay site, that 'exploits all ebay members, particularly those without knowledge of electrical devices'? This being particularly so, now that I have drawn your attention to it. This part is in the transcript thus;
Code:
02:30:26 UTC ebayThanks Don for waiting. I appreciate your time and patience. I have checked your mail and the screenshot you attached in mail. I appreciate your efforts to report this instance. I would like to inform you that this ad is published directly from google and it is not the advertisement of eBay.If you click on this ad you will be redirected to other third party website. Apart from this, I have also noted down all the details and forwarded the details to the dedicated team so that they can take further corrective actions. In the meantime, you can enable popup and ads blocker in your browser so that you cannot see any third party ads on eBay.
02:31:35 UTC me
Not the point -- other members will be scammed by this ad if they don't know about electronics
02:35:14 UTC ebay
Don, I appreciate your valued efforts to remove the ad. I do understand this and I would like to inform you that I have already forwarded this detail to the dedicated team. Once the team review, it will take corrective actions on this ad. We also inform our valued users to enable Popup and ads blocker in the browser so that they don't get any third party ads on eBay to protect them from misleading advertisements.
02:36:38 UTC me
Okay, thank you for your time and help...do be aware though, I will *not* be blocking popups --- if I did that, I'll never know if your dedicated team 'did their job' =)
02:38:08 UTC ebay
Don, Once again I appreciate your valued efforts to remove the ad and bring this misleading information to our notice. Rest Assured, our dedicated team will review it and take corrective actions against this ad.
Not hard to tell when you've pushed the limits of what they'll divulge, and at present I've yet to hear back from them officially...on the other hand, actions speak louder than words. That was about the only angle I thought would draw any credit...ie; draw ebay under any duress expressed under the charter of responsibilities it has regarding/towards it's members...that's you & me =) They cannot knowing let this sort of shit to continue, it's a real hornet's nest when you start poking it with a stick.
Like...supposition, m'kay ... whatever it is, it's about making money from a bullshit device, that scams ppl of their money...and this device, along it's marketing chain, gets auto images generated from thumbnails of youtube vids, to be hoisted as google generated/sponsored ads...on ebay and no doubt other online selling platforms? So....who owns google again? China perhaps? Or are google services being exploited in such a fashion?
Common sense -- if this cranky 60something year old man can notice something like this going on, surely...SURELY....someone else not me should be flagging this crap before it reaches the masses....and yet, here we are. The 'someone else not me', is of course google themselves, as they (or their software) generated the ad and hoisted it on ebay. More common sense - this won't be an isolated example.
Scam device or not, did the original creator of the content used for the ad, get paid for sales generated by ppl on ebay clicking on that ad banner? How much 'monetized' content on youtube is funded by scams like this?
Of course I don't think the ads suddenly disappearing an hour or so after the ebay chat took place had anything to do with me, it's just a coincidence, ebay are always changing things up =)
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