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You are here: Home / Google / Life Insurance Company Advertises on “Malaysian Airlines” on AdWords

Life Insurance Company Advertises on “Malaysian Airlines” on AdWords

July 18, 2014 at 3:11 pm PST By Jennifer Slegg

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We have often heard about pay per click advertisements being displayed at inopportune times or on inopportune news stories, but it is mostly the case of PPC managers who don’t react quickly enough when a bad news story hits their market area – such as cruise ships advertising on Costa Concordia news stories or Porsche dealerships with their paid ads being displayed on news stories about the Paul Walker tragedies.   However, it isn’t too often that we see pay per click advertisers targeting disasters for predatory advertising.

Clem Hall, Manager of Digital Marketing Projects at Destination NSW, spotted this Google AdWords ad by a life insurance and loans company.

malaysia air ppc twitterClearly from the ad copy, this company targeted the disaster (and the many people who would search for it in order to find the latest news on the airplane crash) to sell their life insurance policies.

The company also created a custom landing page for their Malaysian Airlines targeted pay per click campaign as well.

malaysia air ppc 2

According to Mumbrella, the issue was with an outsourced company doing pay per click for the Lisa Group.

“We were made aware of the ads and immediately contacted our overseas partner and ordered it to be taken down,” said Warren, an employee of Lisa Group who declined to reveal his surname before putting down the phone on Mumbrella’s Australian site.

A search of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) revealed the holder of the Lisa Group ABN as Warren Grant Lazarus.

“I apologise for any distress this has caused,” Warren added. “We have removed the ad.”

He refused to name the SEO firm or comment on whether it would continue working with the company.

While having your ads run on disastrous news stories can be an unfortunate part of the pay per click business, doing something as this goes well beyond poor taste and hopefully we will not see more of this happening in the future.

And as for the search marketing company the Lisa Group hired, a quick look at their website’s blog spam backlinks reveals a lot about the quality of the search marketing company who would try and capitalize off a disaster.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
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Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google, Pay Per Click Tagged With: Google, pay per click, PPC

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  1. Top SEM Picks – Week in Review July 20, 2014 - The SEM Post says:
    July 20, 2014 at 11:23 pm

    […] Life Insurance Company Advertises on “Malaysian Airlines” on AdWords […]

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