Question 1 of 2:
Can you spot the odd one out from this group of banners that returned from a query on WhatRunsWhere?
Question 2 of 2:
Now that you passed Test #1, comes the hard part. Test #2. Can you find the odd one out of THIS screenshot:
I want my Wam! rep to do like the one in the picture – She looks like she is about to jump on my desk, shove my face in her tits and then turn XXX rated.
My Wam rep about to grab my Wang rap
Take a really good look at this page. Yes, the ads are indeed Google ads.
Click to Enlarge: Wicked way to enhance AdSense text units
My initial reaction was
“Wow, I didn’t know Google allowed explicit ads like that“…
As my mind started reeling at the possibilities I noticed something…
“Wait, those look like Facebook ads because of the images… and Google ads because of the text – New ad Format?” ..
So I clicked one – yup, it was a legit Google ad and all, leading to something like Estee Lauder –
“Estee Lauder wouldn’t put up an image of a naked chick on an ad. WTF is going on? Are they over-laying the Google ad with something?“… Close…
They are standard vertical AdSense units, and the website is just placing the little square images on the left side of where each little ad sub-unit would fall.
I remember from a long time ago something on the AdSense Terms of Service about making sure ads didn’t look like part of the site content – However I don’t remember anything about making part of the content look like an ad and slapping it next to a real ad! The content layout on this site makes it very clear the stuff at the top is “just ads”, and the content is below, so the ads aren’t blending into the content and causing spurious clicks. The ads are getting a little enhancement from their placement.
Fucking brilliant for epic CTR – I do imagine this is not kosher with Google and very likely to get your AdCents account banned – TOS or no TOS.
PS: If you pay close attention to the actual ads, you’ll notice this browser is being re-targeted quite a bit… PPC management and hosting offers on a Tattoo site? I’m surprised the Bald Storm on Demand Dude didn’t make a nude appearance here too.
Harness the crowd by letting AdSense publishers submit images that go with the site theme on the publisher end, and letting AdWords advertisers choose to display (or not ) site-specific images next to their text ads. Two forces, driving to similar goals, all they need is a slight alignment for better results for everyone.
Haha that must convert for crazy clicks!!!!!
Retargeting is the newest craze. You visit a site, then that advertiser can target you wherever you go across some advertising networks – like Google.
It starts to get very creepy and ridiculous after a while, though. The bald dude from Storm on Demand has been following me around the net for over a week – I see him several times a day. I’m already a customer – this isn’t making me interested in buying more or inviting the dude for drinks or something.
If you’re about to do a retargeting campaign, please think long and hard about your creatives.
I for one wouldn’t mind if the ones chasing me around the net were Playboy bunnies – I’d be delighted. Then again I wouldn’t want hosting from dumb blondes.
This fricking pedophile has been following me for a bout a month now. He is only chasing my in Opera so I had to go back to Firefox just to stop lookin at this asshole.
Imagine my disapointment when I starting to get quite excited as I am scrolling down your blog I see a nice little piece of Gratuitous Eye Candy and then this fucker is back in my life.
I was gonna go over to my Fav “TUBE” sites and bang done gone thanks a lot. Can you write some more shit to get this jerkoff off the front page of your site 
Awesome tool I started using last week: BannerSnack from Snacktools.
Its not as fancy as Wix. Unlike Wix, it creates small files needed for banners, uses the clickTag attribute and most importantly it lets you download your creation free and clear – so you can use it without having to bleed money to them.
I was trying to create some elements for a simple landing page and ended up creating the whole thing in flash with this. Then I proceeded to create a few banners… Put them online and blam-o… Instant magic.
Anyway, for their unlimited $24 a month they also give you access to all the other “Snacktools” – I was really only wanting to sign up to BannerSnack, don’t see much use for the rest – they do make a nice bundle, though and it was a nice surprise to find out I got them for the price I was expecting to pay for just one.
For those $24 a month you get unlimited downloads and a shit-ton of traffic served from Amazon CloudFront should you choose to just embed your banners and stuff (like I’m doing in this post). All in all you get access to:
BannerSnack has all the super-cheesy effects you need for effective landers, and it lets you combine to your heart’s content. Check out their sample gallery.
So I decided to try out their PodSnack too and fed it my favorite “Music for Marketing”. Whenever I’m having a hard time finding inspiration for marketing, I plug this playlist from my iPhone and it gets me into the mood for marketing in no time.
amazing find, thanks! def affordable too
Yeah, I’ve been on the hunt for something like this for a while – Someone mentioned it among tools they were looking into over at ppvplaybook.com – as they say, the rest is history.
Talk about fucked up. I’ve seen this pretty much all over the place – reputable news outlets carrying the shadiest of ads. Some of these advertisers clearly have the dough to grease the wheels — if you go try to advertise this crap with these same ad networks, you’ll get declined. I tried. Fuckers.
Then it dawned on me… Maybe, just maybe, its the advertising network itself running these ads on their own placements. Nice.
Either way, this is messed up. Trust is transient, so the trust a person has over the news outlet they are visiting transfers to the ads they carry and over to what they read.
Disclosure: This is fucked up only because I’m not doing it. If I were, then this would be “business as usual”.
I know what you mean! I tried to do the same thing a while back.
Also I believe there is a double standard with Facebook advertising + Myspace advertising as well.
Agreed, this sucks. And also agreed, if I was getting away with it too, it would not suck as much.
They just probably made an exclusive IO with the network, so noobs are out
NegBox, 
Davey is discussing. 
Brent W. are discussing.
They’re taking it a bit far by using porn, but aligning images with Adsense text ads is pretty old school. It was abused to death when “adsense arbitrage” was hot and has been explicitly banned in their TOS since then.