T.J. Prebil

Bogus Clicks for Buick Regal

The ad below appeared in the middle of Cars.com’s homepage tonight. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about the ad except for when you try to close it.

One would think that all I’d have to do is select the word “CLOSE” in the top corner, right? Ah, but that would be far too easy (and wouldn’t guarantee a healthy number of click-throughs).

Instead, to remove the advertisement from page, users must select what looks like a series of stacked X’s just to the right of the word “CLOSE.” Selecting “CLOSE”, or just missing the Xs, actually launches a web page promoting the 2011 Buick Regal.

To confirm my initial observation, I actually loaded the page multiple times in two different browsers – Chrome and Firefox – and got the same result each time.

While I’m sure most users don’t give this minor annoyance a second thought, to me ads like this represent the bottom-of-the-barrel in online marketing tactics. I hope the people at Buick recognize that they’re paying for bogus and deceptive clicks to their website.

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