I know it’s been a really long time since I last posted. Hopefully you guys still trust me! :)
Anyway, I found this today and was kinda shocked.
My Facebook account shows me ads from the Detroit area sometimes (even though my account has been updated to reflect that I live in Bangkok now.).
I saw this ad today on Facebook from local Detroit TV station Channel 7 wxyz.com.
Advertising your story on Facebook seems like an awesome way to promote your story – albeit likely very expensive (my guess is they are paying at least $0.50 per click and I can’t imagine their bounce rate isn’t less than 70%.
So what’s wrong with this ad?
First of all, don’t we *theoretically* still live in a country where people are considered innocent until proven guilty? From all I can read in this ad, the person pictured is said to be involved in a number of hit and runs – and she doesn’t care and she won’t stop. BUT the police apparently aren’t going after her. Why not?
The problem is, has this woman been charged or proven guilty of these crimes? If not, isn’t this ad making her guilty in the minds of all people who see it? The ad says police aren’t pursuing her. So my guess is she hasn’t faced a judge for these alleged crimes.
I wanted to confirm this, but when I clicked the ad to read the story, I came to this:
What do you guys think?
Is this an example of irresponsible promotion?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Irresponsible, probably. Careless, definitely.
I’m not a lawyer but I’d wager she would have a pretty good case against the station for damaging her reputation. Regardless of the legal issues, the person responsible for buying those ads should be demoted simply for paying for clicks to a 404 page!
Рекламе доверять никогда нельзя
Irresponsible indeed. It is a ploy to get hits to the site using shock value. I saw an “news piece” the other day saying that Lady Gaga has died and had the same response when I clicked on the link. It was another small news company.
Incredibly cheap and tacky schemes to gain traffic should be treated as spam. It is a lawsuit waiting to happen – and in the case of Facebook, we know they have a legal team; so if they fail to pick up such potentially law-breakiing behaviour, removing it immediately and taking action against repeat offenders, we know who our frustration should be directed at – those facilitating this.