Jason Whitlock is perhaps not as internet-savvy as we thought.
The former ESPN employee became the butt of jokes this week after trying to blame his former paymasters for an ad he came across while on their website, having taken to X to post a photo of an ad for a birthday card reading: “balls deep inside of me is a great way to spend your birthday.”
“I’m looking at NFL standings on espn.com. This is the ad running above the standings. How is this possible? Appropriate?” he wrote in the caption.
Apparently, the dude has no idea how targeted ads work. If you’ve been on the internet for a while, you’d know that you don’t come across an ad that isn’t somehow related to your search interests. It’s the whole point of internet advertising.
The community notes did its best to educate.
“Targeted advertising is served to individual users based on demographic information, inferred identity, and past browsing and interaction,” an attached message read.
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Whitlock has been working on the internet for a while now, so we’d expect him to know this. Instead of handing ESPN an L, like we’re sure he intended, all he’s managed to do is look foolish. And fans have been roasting him, as expected.
We don’t even want to know what he’s been searching for…
But he’d do well to clear those cookies before taking photos of his screen again.
