Until now, my articles on lying clickbait have focused on the content promotion services that use the technique, such as Taboola and Revcontent.
Today, I’m going to focus on a sponsor of lying clickbait: Yahoo.
Yahoo is pretty desperate to increase its advertising revenue, so it has turned to unscrupulous content marketing services to goose its numbers.
Yahoo Finance has cluttered up its news feed with cheap ads for herbal medicines, get rich quick schemes, and “proven” ways to attract women. It also added sponsored content using lying clickbait photos.
One promoted article titled “Rebel Wilson Looks Amazing After Losing Weight” used a Photoshopped picture of the actress made to look thin.
The doctored photo is part of a series of photos done by groups on Facebook and Reddit that digitally slim down plus-sized celebrities. The Facebook group is called Project Harpoon and the Reddit subpage is called Thinner Beauty. (See article by the Daily Mail.)
Another promoted article titled “Images of the Titanic Taken by Passenger’s Camera” used a photo from the 1943 German propaganda film “Titanic.”
The sponsored post claims, “Rare Photos from Inside the Titanic Revealed to the World for the First Time.”
Hardly. (See articles on the 1943 film on Wikipedia and IMDb.)
Yahoo also has used some lying clickbait seen elsewhere, such as Erik Estrada and Bruno Mars in a post titled “Celebrity Kids Who Could Impersonate Their Parents.”
And just for illustration purposes, here are some sponsored ads Yahoo has been running in its news feeds.
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