Google Berg Beheading Ads Gone

[Garrett]

A tip from astute reader William Hourihan revealed that someone had put up Nicholas Berg's beheading video for sale and bought Google ads for it. The ads have either been pulled or the advertiser ran out of money for the day.

Battelle's blog has an image of the ad (http://battellemedia.com/images/berg.jpg) itself and includes a link to the site selling the video.

The site includes no contact information - I wanted to find out if the owners had their ads removed or just ran out of budget.

If they've been removed they've joined the ranks of the tshirt vendor with anti-Bush tshirts and the environmentalist company, both of whom had their ads removed from Google (http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20040429TshirtCompanyDeniedGoogleAdWordsCampaign.h tml).

[pedstersplanet]

Pease forgive me for this comment. I've seen this video (just for curiousity) on a few sites for ''free''. As sick as it is offering it for free, but actually selliing/buying stuff like this is totally wrong....

just my 5p's worth.

[WillHourihan]

Hi

I just thought I would let you know what actually happened regarding the 'Google Ad' I email you about. I complained to Google AND PayPal who were handling the payments. I got a reply from Google saying that they reviewed my complaint, found that it was legitimate and were in the process of removing the ad from their system. A couple of days later I received another email from the Google Ad team apologizing and thanking me for pointing it out.

I was very satisfied in the way Google handled the complaint and found them very helpful and courteous.

I received no email what so ever from PayPal which I was surprised by.

Sincerely
Will