Advertising fail



  • I use Yahoo Mail, (which I'm sure some people here will think is TRWTF right there, but it works well for me and has for well over a decade now,) and it put little ads in the sidebar while I read my mail.  Some of them are interesting, most of them I just end up ignoring, but this morning I ran into one that I just don't know what to make of.  You see, it's not in English.  Or any other language I can read for that matter, or even any other language I can recognize by sight!

     Anyone have any idea what language this ad is in, and what it's advertising?  (The URL won't help any.  It was a Flash ad, even though there was no animation whatsoever, so I took a screenshot and uploaded it to my webserver.)

     



  • Uhhh...Arabic maybe?

    http://www.arab-ipu.org/help.html

     You know Latin characters aren't the only ones out there, right?



  • It is in arabic.  Just go to the website mentioned and it sends you to "home-ar.php".  Site is too slow to tell me what the heck it is selling.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    Anyone have any idea what language this ad is in
    Looks like Arabic (or some derivative of it) in a sans serif font, but I am no expert. Looks like they're advertising a world tour vacation. Edit; damn, three responses all at the same(ish) time.



  • Looks like Arabic to me too. It's an ad for a contest LG is running to win travel to "anywhere you want" for 80 days. It is a very slow site... in English here



  • @JeffRules said:

    Uhhh...Arabic maybe?

    http://www.arab-ipu.org/help.html

     You know Latin characters aren't the only ones out there, right?

     

     I sure do.  I know what Cyrillic and Hebrew characters look like, and I can tell Chinese and Japanese apart most of the time, even though  I can't actually read any of those languages.  I guess now I know what Arabic looks like too.   I just wonder why I got an ad in Arabic on my mailbox.



  • @jasmine2501 said:

    Looks like Arabic to me too. It's an ad for a contest LG is running to win travel to "anywhere you want" for 80 days. It is a very slow site... in English here

    [b]The Websense category "Malicious Web Sites" is filtered.[/b]

    Huh.



  • @TarquinWJ said:

    in a sans serif font,
     

    I thought serifs and similar ThingiesTM in Arabic could actually transform a sentence's meaning to something shamefully different, like "40 virgins" into "40 sapling date palms" and such.



  • @dhromed said:

    I thought serifs and similar ThingiesTM in Arabic could actually transform a sentence's meaning to something shamefully different, like "40 virgins" into "40 sapling date palms" and such.

    What???  Shit, does anybody here know how to disarm a bomb?



  •  @morbiuswilters said:

    @dhromed said:

    I thought serifs and similar ThingiesTM in Arabic could actually transform a sentence's meaning to something shamefully different, like "40 virgins" into "40 sapling date palms" and such.

    What???  Shit, does anybody here know how to disarm a bomb?

     

    Just cut the red wire. Always the red wire.



  • @dhromed said:

    @TarquinWJ said:

    in a sans serif font,
     

    I thought serifs and similar ThingiesTM in Arabic could actually transform a sentence's meaning to something shamefully different, like "40 virgins" into "40 sapling date palms" and such.

    Heh, given that there are upto 4 forms of each letter and 28 letters, it wouldn't take much to accidentally make one look like another. Well, they do often seem to use a calligraphy style of writing, where lines get thicker and thinner as you draw a loop. That is sortof like their equivalent of serif - Japanese often uses something similar (Gothic vs Ming/Mincho). In the font used in that ad, however, almost all lines are the same thickness - a lot like most western sans-serif fonts, which makes it look much less like the normal handwriting appearance. Not sure if there are proper terms for that sort of font difference. Probably someone out there cares a great deal about it, and will know the proper terms. Wikipedia mentions 8 types of typeface, none of which seem to cover the font style shown here.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    what Cyrillic and Hebrew characters look like, and I can tell Chinese and Japanese apart most of the time, even though  I can't actually read any of those languages.  I guess now I know what Arabic looks like too.   I just wonder why I got an ad in Arabic on my mailbox.

    It means the terrorists have already won.



  • @Evo said:

    Just cut the red wire. Always the red wire.

     

    Actually, you have to cut the wires in this specific order: crimson, scarlet, carmine, ruby, cardinal, coral and finally maroon. Any deviation from this sequence would be ... bad. Good luck.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Anonymouse said:

    @Evo said:
    Just cut the red wire. Always the red wire.
    Actually, you have to cut the wires in this specific order: crimson, scarlet, carmine, ruby, cardinal, coral and finally maroon. Any deviation from this sequence would be ... bad. Good luck.
    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WireDilemma



  • @PJH said:

    @Anonymouse said:
    @Evo said:
    Just cut the red wire. Always the red wire.
    Actually, you have to cut the wires in this specific order: crimson, scarlet, carmine, ruby, cardinal, coral and finally maroon. Any deviation from this sequence would be ... bad. Good luck.
    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WireDilemma
     

     You win the thread!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    134be149-443c-4a82-a762-49f9c6c93627-image.png


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla I think you win the threadGoddamnit Fbmac! And that's what's important.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Mason_Wheeler said in Advertising fail:

    so I took a screenshot and uploaded it to my webserver.

    bdd88cb9-b6bf-405b-889c-ed94f38e20de-image.png

    This was apparently a terrible idea...


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