Saturday, April 23, 2011

Epic MSN Ads Fail!

I just noticed that lately my blog has been filled with too much seriousness. So I thought it might be a good idea to lighten things up a bit. But I wasn't exactly sure how, because I didn't want to (re)post xckd, geek & poke or dilbert. Facebook, lately, it seems is flooding you with such things already. I don't want to add to your spam. Just then an opportunity knocked in the most unusual way.
I was searching for something in my mail archives. A 5 year old email turned up in the results, which I didn't expect to show up for something I was looking for. It was an old email asking my professor at PICT for a letter of recommendation while I was applying for masters.  Google is pretty good with searches (did I already mention that?) so out of curiosity I opened the email.  Lo and behold! I discovered what could easily be one of the biggest Google MSN Ads fail!  Here's the screen shot! Click to read the complete email thread and ads fail!

Epic Google MSN Ads Fail!
I was neither looking for s_x not headache after s_x! Google MSN Ads are supposed to be relevant to the content, or so I thought! But as you can see here, it seems way off the target! There is no correlation, whatsoever, between asking for a letter of recommendation and s_x doctors!  Lol! I thought this was a perfect opportunity to lighten things up a bit!

Keep watching the space, I have a nice post cooked up for some more fun, esp. for geeks! :)
edit, 2011/12/02: You know you are a geek when...

On a completely unrelated note (lazy to make another post?), the weather here in Seattle today was simply outstanding.  It must have been more than 6-8 months (I'm not kidding!) that Sun was out from morning through evening, without any trace of rains or clouds.  I, for sure, haven't see such a beautiful day in Seattle in months.  On freeways, I could see even the farthest of mountain ranges! I felt as ecstatic watching them as a kid feels after watching his favorite Disney character come to life :)

- - - - - - - - - edit, 2011/04/26 - - - - - - - - -
Thanks to my friend, Magesh, for hinting that the ad in question might actually be coming from sender's email client. I verified that and it indeed coming from sender's client, MSN, and NOT from Google Ads. Screenshot below shows URL when I mouse-over the link.
So I stand corrected, it is an Epic MSN Ads fail! :) Or... given that a few years ago hotmail would deliver EVERY junk mail to my inbox and most of legitimate emails to Junk folder, this was expected? :-P

Mouse-over reveals the link.

4 comments:

Always Happy said...

Hello Atul,

:) :) even I have noticed that not always google ads are relevant to the content. Just few days ago, i wrote an email to a friend who was travelling to Maldives. It was a short email wishing happy journey, enjoy etc and the google ad that i saw was something to do with 'malayalam restaurants'. There was no mention of malayalam in my email so i wrote back to my friend about it and he joked saying Malayalis can be found in any part of the world and perhaps that is what Google ad is trying to tell him, ''rest assured you will find a malayalam restaurant in Madives!!'....

I like your blog but why do you not write reguarly?

ok, the announcement of a forthcoming funny post is tempting but I am not at all geeky so may not get it. Yet, I will revisit your page.

Cheers
Always Happy

Unknown said...

Atul,

The ad you have shown seem to be the one originating from the senders email client and not the google ad that generally appear separately marked as ad to the right of the mail.

The Shaolin said...

@Always Happy: Nice one! Thanks for reading my posts. I write less these days only because of increased workload, I get less time to prep-up a post. I hope even if you are not a geek per se, you might still like the post :)

@Magesh: Thanks for pointing it out Magesh! It is indeed coming from MSN, sender's email client! Corrected the post. Thanks once again!

The Shaolin said...

The promised geeky post is up: You know you are a geek when...