02 November 2012

As if getting rich off of taxes imposed on poor smokers was not enough for CTFK...

A friend sent me a screenshot of a Google search of "Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids" which reveals an interesting twist on that organization's fund raising strategies:  the headline content for their website appears to be an ad for "generic Viagra".


Campaign for Impotence-Free Kids?

So either they are not satisfied to confiscate untold riches from the involuntary contributions of overtaxed smokers, and so are picking up a bit of extra revenue, or they are trying to encourage the creation of more kids so that they have reason to demand more funding.


I suppose there is a third explanation, that they are the victim of some kind of hacking, but I like my other theories better.  If you do the search soon, you can probably see the same result (it worked for me), though I have to assume they will fix it eventually.  But they will probably not discover it via this blog -- it is pretty clear that they carefully avoid reading anything outside of their echo chamber for fear of encountering legitimate criticism and troublesome questions.  And besides, they are probably busy right now, trying out their free samples of generic Viagra.

2 comments:

  1. It’s four months late to be posting a comment, but I figure the blog author might read it.

    I don’t have single kind word to say about Tobacco Free Kids, but I doubt they had anything to do with the Viagra ad. Doing the same search today, I don’t see the ad.

    If I understand web searching and publishing, there is an advertising component where the web searching (e.g., Google) or the web hosting site (e.g., Word Press) sells advertising space. The person or organization publishing a website has little or nothing to say about these ads.

    I frequently purchase music / video CD’s plus food, household supplies, etc. on-line. Frequently, when I’m accessing a total unrelated website (U.S. foreign policy, a health issue, etc.) I’ll see an ad from a vendor highlighting some product that I have either already bought or decided not to buy. They’re putting cookies on my PC and offering me things I might like. Nice but I’ll go back (or not go back) to that website to buy more without their spending money for the ad.

    Bottom line, is there any evidence that Tobacco Free Kids (evil as they are) got any money from the Viagra ad? I suspect that some vendor was just trying to sell their product on “health related” websites.

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    Replies
    1. Well, mostly this was humor, and no one was really claiming that CTFK was doing this intentionally (unlike them, we do not tell obvious lies). But it was still bizarre. Since they are lavishly funded by punitive taxes imposed on smokers, they presumably do not bother with paid advertising and it is difficult to believe they would allow it on their site. Yet this showed up, and everyone who was asked to check on what they were seeing saw it, though I had to turn off AdBlock to see it -- I was not the one who discovered it.

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