Funny Google ads

What is the smallest city in the world?

[RonPK]

On my site's homepage I've been seeing ads consisting out of only a question, like "How tall is the Eiffel tower?" or "When did dinosaurs live?". The url's point to google.com/search?q=<funny question here>&client=ca-<my adsense ID here>
Only a question, nothing else.

Normally I get more or less targeted ads, never seen any alternative ads. Anyone else seen this? Could it be because I'm using my provider's proxy server? A brief test shows that I get only regular ads when surfing without a proxy.

I searched the library to see whether this is a really dumb & often asked question, but couldn't find anything...

[ChrisKud5]

How tall is the Efiel tower?

Google may be pushing a little advertising their way at the expense of adsense publishers, they may be paid for ads, or they may be "Google PSA's To Expand Stupid Gameshow Knowledge".

Sorry but i have yet to see one of these ads on my pages (or anywhere else for that matter).

[Yidaki]

OT:

When did dinosaurs live?

#1 Where Did Dinosaurs Live?
#2 How did dinosaurs live?
#3 Where Did Dinosaurs Live?
#4 BBC - Walking with Dinosaurs - How Do We Know
#5 BBC - Walking with Dinosaurs - How Do We Know
#6-10 Did Dinosaurs Live in Your Backyard? (Amazon + Affiliates)
#12 When Did the Dinosaurs Live?

We all know that google doesn't hand manipulate serp's so they have to live with this bad marketing - they'd better pause the ad for this query though.

If you have more of these ads, feel free to sticky me them, so i can set up some pages to fish the traffic... ;)

[RonPK]

I haven't seen any today (yet). Here are the questions I saved yesterday. The ads are in Dutch (as is the site), so I'll try to translate them:
* in what period did the dinosaurs live?
* according to mythology, who defeated the nine-headed snake Hydra?
* what is a <name of insect larva that lives just below the surface of a leaf>?
* how did Cleopatra die?
* why are bananas curved?
* how tall is the Eiffel tower?
* what is the smallest town in the world?
* how does a traffic speed camera work?

No hover text, and in the status bar it only says 'ga naar' (go to).

Take your pick, Yidaki!

[Jenstar]

I wonder if this is somehow in reponse to PSAs being geotargeted? If there are not PSAs for a specific country IP address (most tend to be US, Canadian or UK based organizations) perhaps they are showing these Google trivia questions instead.

[robsynnott]

Had an ad for George Bush cardboard cutouts on my MySQL C API tutorial a while back; terrifying :S. They went away after a few days.
Rob.

[ControlEngineer]

If I see such an ad on anyone else's site I will click on it and see where it takes me.

Could be a way of selling a book or information site.

[RonPK]

Jenstar, that could be right. I've never seen any PSA's in Dutch. Maybe the local office is still working on that...

[shaylor]

The smallest City in the world is actually in my back yard. I live in central Oregon. There is a City called Millican City with a population of 1 but is in fact a City. -FYI

[Sanenet]

I saw these ads in Spanish a while back, just after they launched. At the time I thought that they were just filling in inventory (they took you to Google, doing a search for that query).

OT: Well remember the time I setup a spoof advert for a coworker, advertising for a date for him ;) Ah, laughter, sweet natures tired restorer.

[ChrisKud5]

"The smallest City in the world is actually in my back yard. I live in central Oregon. There is a City called Millican City with a population of 1 but is in fact a City. -FYI "

Doesn't a "city" mean like 25,000 people? If it is smaller it is a town of village? If it is so small is'nt it just listed as "unincorporated"?

I think the smallest "city" in terms of people has to be right on the threshold of what makes a city, like 25,000 or 25,001 people.

[Sanenet]

[google.com...]

Google asks, and Google replies...

[steven mheakyle]

all you guys have funny ads, in our case we have seen wrong spelling ads :)

speling or spelling :)