Ads that have adapted to adblockers, and became "real" stories about saving 15 percent or more on car insurance. Also the 265th episode of South Park.
I just want to watch the news, but then I'm looking at an ad. I try to click the x, but it turns out its a link for the top ten worst celebrity plastic surgeries ever. So as I'm looking through it I get another ad leading to a slideshow on money making hacks even though it isn't even a hack, leading me to another ad, but I just want to know about the presidential campaign, but when I try to go back it turns out its a link to some sponsored content about Geico. And then the cycle repeats.
Snonym for advertisement or click-bait. Also called "promoted content", to trick the people who *finally* figured out sponsored content also means "bullshit follows".
It's usually some picture completely out of context for the advert, just there to draw your attention to the fraudlent, errr, sponsored content. These spurious pictures used to bounce around in their frames, before the Geneva Convention outlawed those mechanisms (and HTML flash tags) as crimes against humanity.
Underneath each spurious photo will be a partial headline designed to create a curiosity or "intellectual" itch that needs to scratched. For instance, "Doctors recommend that all parents of three headed babies do this..". Sometimes these lies, err, partial headlines are keyed to you location, in order to astonish you that something "important" is happening nearby. For instance "If you live near Ulan Bator, your mortgage could be paid...". Sponsored content usually appears in groups of four to six turds, or frames, at the end of an article. Nowadays, a real story may lurk in the fecal matter, to try to fool you into clicking on one of the nearby stools.
1) Never click on sponsored content; it can summon the devil, or something even more evil from Taboola!
2) "Sponsored content" is related to "useful" as "Jussie Smollett" is to "truthful".