It makes me sick when companies are so successful at being sleezy, that they can afford to advertise in Google Mail, and have a high enough conversion rate that the venture is profitable.

I hesitate to give the url, of my latest nnoyance, because they are probably good enough marketers that they’ll receive a ping and then launch some kid of attack on me.  So, here it is, but you can’t cllick on it.  http://your fortune revealed [dot].com.  You have to actually copy and paste this in and remove the spaces. 

These guys are pretty high on the scumbag meter.  Unsuspecting people will enter their cell phone number and start getting texts, which they will start paying for if they aren’t careful and take action.

I click on a lot of links in Google Mail to see what works from a marketing perspective.  Frankly, Gmail is starting to take on a more Hotmail-like feel with the continual ads for shady thing like this.  It’s too bad that Gmail doesn’t have some sort of "customer filter" where we could choose to block ads from disreputable companies.  Or, if a company gets enough block requests, their CPC should rise.   Ad based email programs work if the ads are unobtrusive, or even better, relevant.  When they are scams, they just turn people to other email programs.

Rant over, I hope this campaign fails.  I for one, will click on the ad every time I see it, so they pay the $.25 over and over again but never get a conversion.