I was researching internet trends (and Ron Paul’s popularity on the internet) today and come across this on Youtube (click the picture to expand it). As you’ll see, this is an ad for Mobilink Indigo’s Blackberry service on the right.

To be honest, it is a bit confusing — is this a case of Google selling ads based on keywords entered AND geographical location? Was someone in Mobilink really smart enough to think that a person in Islamabad searching for the Republican Debates MUST be smart enough to be a Blackberry customer?

Is this a case of Mobilink advertising directly on Youtube? Why advertise Indigo on Youtube, whose primary demographic is still teenagers?

In fact, why should Mobilink advertise Blackberry online in the first place — shouldn’t blackberry advertise their own products online?!

Or is it a case of my ISP tacking on some advertisements as it streams down content to me? In other words, Mobilink pays PTCL Broadband to add a proxy service in between that presents targetted ads on HTML pages? It sounds like a conspiracy theory but technically its quite possible (logic is similar to GreaseMonkey scripts) — all that’s needed is the lack of ethics to do so.

What do you think happened here? Add your thoughts, or better if you know someone from Mobilink’s marketing dept get some confirmation on this and share it with the rest of us.