How to make $1 billion in the weight loss business

July 9, 2011

“Cut down a bit of your belly everyday by following this 1 weird old tip,”

it reads. The “weird old tip” is revealed only after you abandon what you

were reading and click on the ad.

For months, versions of the ad have been just about everywhere. They have

run as pop-ups and display ads on some of the most popular Web sites around,

including Facebook, Weather.com and About.com. They have also shown up on

the home pages of news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times, MSNBC,

The Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper in Britain.

The ad is so broadly distributed that it’s likely you’ve seen it not just

once or twice but hundreds of times. The accumulated number of “impressions”

— the number of times it has flashed by someone on the Internet over the

past 18 months— runs into “the tens of billions,” estimates Steve Wernikoff,

a government lawyer who has tracked it. “It’s just a tremendous amount.”

The innocent-seeming “1 Tip” ad is actually the tip of something much

larger: a vast array of diet and weight-loss companies hawking everything

from pills made from African mangoes to potions made from exotic acai

berries. Federal officials have alleged that the companies behind the ads

make inflated claims about their products and use deceptive means to market

them.

The take so far: at least $1 billion and counting.

Read the rest @ Washington

ad-part-of-scheme-government-says/2011/06/27/gIQAbI6Q1H_story.html>(registration

may be required)

--

Ortiz, MS, RD

Check out my blog: mixture of deals and nutrition

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