Sponsored Facebook ads haven’t attracted much praise recently.
We weren’t surprised when we saw the adverts on the left appear on our newsfeed today.
Ads like this in the “get ripped” niche are often total spam. Ludicrous claims, fake testimonials, misleading information. They’re generally condemned by the health industry, and yet they often appear on Facebook with other shady sites like “work-from-home opportunities” and dodgy adult dating sites.
So we were also not surprised when, after clicking on the advert, we were taken to a website at www.mens.health-magasine.com (yes, magazine spelt incorrectly) which is a two-week old domain that from the offset can be dismissed by most as a spammy knockoff to the legitimate MensHealth brand.
The website itself, (screenshot below) uses a fake banner taken from the MensHealth website (none of the links worked since the entire banner was just an image) and the entire site was created to peddle some “miracle supplements” that falsely claimed Hollywood stars such as Gerard Butler used to get into shape.
It was all a very typical supplement scam that marketed shady products which inevitably got visitors entangled in difficult-to-cancel subscriptions bustling with hidden T+Cs and hefty monthly charges.
Make no mistake – the whole site is something that is more accustomed to the dark corners of your junk mail folder. Yet an advert linking to it still took pride of place on the Facebook website.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such spammy ads appear on Facebook, and it undoubtedly will not be the last. However what really caught our attention was how the advert was able to use the web address of the legitimate MensHealth brand in the Facebook advert itself.
You can see from our image of the adverts above that the address menshealth.com is clearly visible on the advert itself. However, unlike other adverts that really did forward you to the URL displayed, this ad took you to the spammy www.mens.health-magasine.com, not the legitimate www.menshealth.com.
The same web address even appeared when attempting to remove the advert by clicking the X on the top right hand corner of the ad.
This is particularly worrying for a number of reasons. Primarily because it is clearly deceptive. When clicking on the ad, the visitor would naturally be expecting to be taken to the web address advertised, not a spammy knockoff hosted elsewhere.
It is also worrying for MensHealth themselves. Not only do they have to contend with spam websites stealing their brand image to provide an air of legitimacy to the shady products they are peddling, but also with Facebook who allow the same spammers to create obviously misleading adverts using their brand name and web address.
So either 1 of 2 things has happened.
Either Facebook knew the advert was misleading and led to a spam website, but didn’t care enough to pull the advert.
Or, despite being one of their primary sources for income, Facebook do not vet adverts to a suitable standard, thus allowing a spam ad as blatant as this to become published onto their site.
At the end of the day, neither answer bodes well for Facebook. And in this case, nor MensHealth.
What do you think of Facebook sponsored ads? Have you seen other adverts misuse a legitimate brand name? What would you do if you represented MensHealth? Let us know below.
