A Useless Ad

I noticed an unusual ad on a website:

image of an online advertisement directing you to a 404 not found page

Why would you want to direct people to a page that doesn’t exist?

My guess is that some very popular site published a bad link. A bunch of people then tried to follow that link and got a 404 error. But the advertising algorithm saw a bunch of traffic for that page and, since it is probably programmed to push the more popular pages, thought it was popular enough that other people would want to see it.

I did not click on the link, but I bet enough people were curious enough to do so. And that only perpetuated the problem, because it continued the page’s popularity.

Here is how the ad appeared in mobile format:

image of an online advertisement directing you to a 404 not found page

Anyway, it provided me with a few minutes of entertainment.

Your strength will be spent uselessly, for your land will not yield its produce and the trees of the land will not yield their fruit.

Leviticus 26:20

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This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:03 am and has been carefully placed in the Marketing, Mishaps category.

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