Swoggi – How People Are Paying Next to Nothing for New iPads

We saw this web “ad” amid links to third-party articles across the web — “news from across the web.” That is, we saw it in a place you wouldn’t expect to see an ad, and it wasn’t marked as an ad. Clicking the link takes you to a Short for a web log, a blog is a kind of online diary that normal, everyday people can maintain to share details of their life or discuss their interests. A word of warning, though – a ‘blog’ that may appear to from a normal working mom in Nebraska, may actually be an advertising scheme by a company to promote its product(s) under the guise of a neutral, third-party endorsement. page, “Conso Blogger,” that tells you all about a great new auction website called Swoggi.

The problem? This all appears to be a big unmarked ad for Swoggi. The initial link seems to be an unmarked ad. The link takes you to a blog, which has no disclaimers telling you that it’s an advertorial, a sponsored post, or just a plain old ad. And the Conso Blogger also appears to be an ad. Every outward-bound link on the “blog” takes users to Swoggi. Most of the blog posts on Conso Blogger are about Swoggi and how great Swoggi is.

So it seems a whole lot like someone is trying to trick you into thinking Conso Blogger is an independent source and you should trust its opinion on Swoggi. But something is off here. Be wary of advertisements posing as independent sites — if it’s promoting something as if it were an ad, be suspicious.

For more on auction sites and how often they’re not such great deals, click here.