Ebay ads have always amused us.

Have seen quite a few babies for sale on there, but never gone searching for crack babies...

Just want to say thanks for giving me something to laugh at on this cold Monday morning :-)

Some people are just having fun - and there is a Google ad-checking bot that needs its code checking. Or there are some Google employees that are not oogling at Ads enough before okaying them.

Whilst amusing, as more and more of these poor ads appear they deliver a result to the user which will only serve to frustrate them, and potentially these users will become disenchanted with the medium. The advertisers who are taking the time and effort to produce professional-standard PPC copywriting suffer too.

A search page is like an arena in ancient Rome.  The PPC ads are the gladiators, pitched in against one another in a deperate fight to the death.  The last man standing is the one that gets the click.  And the only weapons they have to fight with are words, so their prowess at using them is what they live or die by.  Or in other words, copy in PPC ads matters.       

Thanks for posting this.  Someday the bots will know better, but, until then, I get to cry laughing at my desk.

I especially love the World of Warcraft one.  A real person had to set that one in motion.  I can see that person in my mind right now, rushing online too their doom after attending a PPC webinar, something like, "23 under-targeted PPC niches. Target them TODAY and profit!" 

Thanks for the belly laugh, these are excellent! I particularly like the certificate in terrorism. I wonder what sorts of jobs require that qualification?

The World of Warcraft one is deliberate, I bet it has the best CTR as well.

Yes, I think the WOW ad doesn't really deserve the lame label, but it is funny...

These are indeed some pretty random ads, but I guess that is what you get when your operate off of keywords.

{keyword}
+ no brains

Some companies definitely need to hire better online marketing people..as per ebay...do they care? no...

{use your brains}

used toilet paper??? seriously??

I'm loving ebay's approach to PPC.  Who knew the range of products available on there......!

The World of Warcraft one is clever marketing.. the remainders are lazy algorithms

I'm sure there are loads more of these! I'd love to know which were client errors and which were agency mistakes - and expect automation gets the blame in each case. Makes you think there must be another way...

Mike Groves

I still get these kind of ads all the time by Amazon on my Windows Phone (using Bing). Please see this tweet for examples:

https://twitter.com/Aleksandarmoran/status/419135602148130816/photo/1

This is really the tip of the iceberg though, it happens on pretty much every search!