Posts tagged Penny Auctions
Facebook ads underwent a subtle change today. If you haven’t noticed, ads that take the user off the site are now displaying the URL that you’ll be taken to, aping Google’s approach with paid search ads in an effort to increase transparency to the user.
At least that’s the theory.
I noticed these when I just visited Facebook, and was particularly drawn to an ad (see left) that followed much the winning formula we struck upon at Swoopo: great product, incredible price and an urging not to miss out. They’d upped the ante by including a photo of Stephen Fry (or at least a lookalike) holding an iPhone, hinting that he was the winner.
This in itself wasn’t much of a surprise. Swoopo’s success has thrown up hordes of clones who’ve copied the basic format and then set about luring in bidders.
What surprised me though was that the ad was apparently from LivingSocial, the Groupon-alike. Has LivingSocial jumped on the penny auction bandwagon too? The copy suggested it might indeed be a daily deal site, rather than penny auctions. It seemed unlikely, but, intrigued I clicked through.
A few redirects later I landed on SwipeAuctions.com, a penny auction site that pulls a lot of clever punches to try to tempt visitors to join in. Not LivingSocial at all.
Is this a simple bug? It could be, but I suspect that SwipeAuctions have found a clever way to make the display URL show livingsocial.com to increase click-through rates. Can anyone work out how they’re doing it?
