Today I saw a Facebook ad for a dating site called It’s Just Karma. As a Redditor, I had to check it out. The click led to a generic landing page with no dating site branding. Lot’s of lead-generation companies do this, they take the click and redirect it to their customers, often based on the results of a few questions asked on the page. In this case, the second click led me to a site called Just Smoking Singles, with a photo of a woman with a big fat stogie talking to a guy. No questions were asked of me at any time.
I was expecting some sort of new-age site with a woman doing yoga or meditating. Instead, I end of on a site dedicated to smokers. Now that is actually an interesting and enormous niche, but oh the betrayal.
I looked at the Terms and Conditions page and I find:
“The Site and the Service are operated by White Label Dating Incorporated, a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, whose registered office is 425 Boylston Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02116. Communications relating to the Site or Service should be sent to…”
I used to live near Boyleston street in Boston. Hey WLD, when did you get an office in Boston?
These redirects are a pack of lies. Why would anyone sign up for a site they didn’t click a link for? (Maybe a lot and this is why they do this?). Regardless, this commonplace trickery drives me crazy. The disconnect between trust and advertising and revenue, it’s quite ugly in the dating industry and is never going to stop for the tier 2 and tier 3 players as long as the tier 1 companies continue to dominate.
