Yesterday while I was waiting on a particularly slow Sportsbook.com reload, I followed a random e-mail about an update on my Facebook profile. After dealing with the important event (I believe DaveF ‘poked’ me), I went to change my status. The ’status’ in Facebook is pretty much identical to the feature in most modern IM applications, where you can change your status to something clever, and all your Friends/Connections/Contacts can view it somehow. I changed my status to “…is parlaying the Giants +12 to the Under 55″.

On refresh, the page displayed this ad:

omg, lol

I’m not ANNOYED or anything, I just think it’s funny that the ad-selection engine noticed my status and used that to feed me a gambling problem ad. It could have keyed on the word Parlay, or Giants, or perhaps both of them. (It also could have been completely random, but I don’t think anyone believes that’s very likely)

The more astute observers among you will notice that I won my parlay. I also had a smallish amount on the Giants to win, straight up. I made out like a bandit yesterday. I think I’ll go deposit my winnings in my Smashball bank account, we’ll burn through them in like a week!