- Popular clickbait adverts displayed online suggested US chain Five Guys is shutting down
- Rumors began circulating that Five Guys is closing down in 2024.
- The advert was actually “advertising arbitrage.”
Panic over for fans of Five Guys, as the restaurant is not set to close its doors, despite rumors circulating
Why people believe Five Guys is closing
Internet users have been up in arms after being led to believe that Five Guys is shutting its doors to customers next year. They were convinced by online ads across YouTube and Google ads that showed photos of a Five Guys store, with the caption: “They’re closing doors in 2024. Restaurant chains closing 2024” or “It’s time to say goodbye, these fast food restaurants be closing the doors.”
Although the advert headlines didn’t explicitly specify that Five Guys is closing, the images certainly suggested it.
No, Five Guys is not shutting
As reported by Snopes, the adverts circulating online took users to an article on Reference.com titled “These 53 Restaurant Chains Are on the Brink of Disappearing Entirely.”
According to Snopes, the article was published in 2020 and last updated in 2021 – meaning it hasn’t been updated in over two years.
Visiting the article shows a list of 68 different US restaurants that the site believes could close in the future, with text blurbs on financial troubles or previously closed locations. Funnily enough, Five Guys was not even featured in the list at all.
Why do these adverts even exist?
Although you might be familiar with the term “clickbait” already, these types of adverts are a very specific form of clickbait described as “advertising arbitrage”
In short, these adverts aim to bring readers to the webpage article, which they run various adverts on. The aim is to earn more back from the adverts on the article than the company paid to advertise the article across other sites and platforms in the first place.
Although this is an advertisement model used by most businesses—paying for an advert in hopes of earning more back in generated profits, these adverts are often extremely misleading. Companies make the adverts as clickworthy as possible, in order to get as many clicks as they can and more money – but more often than not, the story itself is far less interesting or completely unrelated and accurate.
Often, the articles will be spread out over various pages or in the form of an exhuasting slideshow, so as to create as much advertising opportunity as possible.
The post Clickbait ads convince people that Five Guys is shutting down in the USA appeared first on HITC.
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