A Marketing Guy Wondering How These Ads are Legal?

Have you guys noticed that some of these little fly-by-night chinsy ads popping up on the Internet are now using the images of famous people? I saw a pennystock ad using Mitt Romney's face. Some internet-advertised drug or health remedy using Matt Lauer's face but it all started with ads using an image of Ellen Dengeneres. The latter would usually have some salascious headline like, "Find out why Ellen's fiancee left her and what she did or didn't derp about it!"

By fly-by-night ads I mean for all I know there might be no real product there. Perhaps they are charging money to bring hits to somebody's website and get paid whether clickers are looking for pennystocks or nothing at all. What I do know though, is celebrities sue when someone uses their image without permission. If your content is not satirical or parody and if you are charging money or making money, I thought you could get sued for that.

They also don't seem like they are paying the celebrities for their images. I don't care too much. I am not Mitt Romney's attorney (though I have a feeling his attorney and I are both caucasian.) I am just wondering how this new trend is getting started without getting killed by a celebrity lawsuit. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Well I thought ads are based on what you search. I get ads for joining the army a lot and never seen ads with celebrities. You must be really interested in the lives of celebrities

They're probably using stock photos. Like, go to Getty Images or a similar website, search for "Ellen Degeneres". Pick which photo you'd like to use, and then pay money.

Stock photography or art is cheap. I think celebrity likenesses are another level of advertising cost altogether but you could be right.

I actually just did a search for an Ellen Degeneres photo on Getty Images, and got quoted a price of $735 for up to a month's usage. More than I'd want to pay, but that's not so expensive that an actual company shouldn't be able to afford it.

It's worth noting here that the image was supposed to be for editorial use only, not advertising. However, even when I selected advertising as the intended use, they were still perfectly fine giving me a quote. Maybe I would've gotten blocked if I actually tried to purchase use of the image, but I'm obviously not gonna go that far just to test it.

$735 for marketing is very affordable. Question answered.