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Shaadi.com advertising on American sports websites

From Santosh On 13 October 2008 View Comments

Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I came across a Shaadi.com banner ad on Rivals.com, a sports website primarily dedicated to American College football.

This morning I logged onto Rivals.com for some sports updates and the Shaadi.com banner ad (area in red) jumped out at me.

My first thought was that somehow the website displays ads based on your profile and perhaps I put my ethnicity in my profile when I signed up, leading to me being subjected to this torture even on non-desi realms. But a quick check of my profile showed I put in no such information. So I did the next logical course of action, I checked with other website users, all non-desi and they all were seeing the Shaadi.com ad also.

So the question is why would Shaadi.com go through the trouble of putting up matrimonial ads at a location very few desis frequent?

A few guesses:
1. Shaadi.com’s marketing department has no clue what they’re doing.
or
2. They’re trying to reach sports loving desis in the U.S. in which case ESPN.com would be a better place for such ads as opposed to the more highly specialized Rivals.com.
or
3. this is just a wild guess. Shaadi.com is in the mail order brides business?

What do you think? Why do you think Shaadi.com spends good money running banner ads on websites rarely frequented by desis?

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  • Rajesh
    shaadi.com deletes and locks your account so you cannot have access to it. They make you pay for the service and then deny you access to it because they now claim they want you to validate your photo by sending them personal IDs such as passport or driver's license. Are they crazy to think people would trust them with this personal information. Also, why do they need this, when validating your photo is optional not mandatory. It's not even mandatory to post a photo, so why are they saying you have to validate it now? I plan on bringing this issue to several organizations in Canada and United States for unfair business practices. I also plan on charging them with services not rendered and unfair business practices by scamming people. I have spoken to several people that experienced this so far and we going to bring a group case together. I will also be taking an ad out in several local media outlets, t.v, radio, paper, magazine and on the internet letting everyone know of our experience and petition to get not only our money back, but compensation for this ordeal. I think it is shocking that they can operate like thieves and nobody faults or penalizes them for unlawful behavior. Also, their mail matches never matches the criteria you set up! Again, more and more examples of their ability to take your money and not provide you with adequate services or no service at all!
  • they have the right to advertise any where they like.
  • Videsh
    Santosh - Maybe the goras have been checking out the shaadi.com chicks???
  • Desigooner:
    It does seem a lot of desi guys follow college football. Maybe we could start a CFB section on UD... hmmmmm

    Anantha, Videsh:
    Your idea of cookies is plausible when it applies to me. That does not explain why some gora guys I know on the same site were getting the same ads.

    Desi,
    Unfortunately that is a side effect to blogging on businesses, services and products. I have to mention this post was in no way intended to promote Shaadi.com
  • Desi
    Whatever the intent was, in the end shaadi.com has got what it needs..a blog entry at Uberdesi..which would be read by many leading to more advertisement than what it paid for at Rivals.com!
  • desigooner
    well rivals is owned by Yahoo .. thats no surprise
  • Videsh: What if we were American? Just joking.

    Santosh: From page source, I see that it is a Javascript version of Yahoo ads which is on that page. Maybe it uses pre-existing cookies (set by Yahoo) on your computer and figures out you are desi because of the websites you browse? Whoa! Sounds like Big Brother to me! ;)
  • Videsh
    thanks to Google.... If you were Polish there would be a Polish dating site where shaadi.com is.
  • desigooner
    i've come across these ads on ScarletNation.com a lot of times recently (Rutgers' rivals.com site) .. i was trying to figure it out as well .. seems like a lot of desi guys do follow college football haha ..
  • The majority of desi guys surfing rivals.com will be single.The married ones wives won’t let them spend time on faltu stuff like American college football!


    ... or are married guys with really cool wives who understand and support their need for "faltu" timepass activities :-)
  • Runa
    Oh yeah it makes sense all right!
    The majority of desi guys surfing rivals.com will be single.The married ones wives won't let them spend time on faltu stuff like American college football!
    * ducks to avoid inevitable brickbats*
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