Bait and switch

Definition

When you advertise one thing and deliver something disappointingly different—the classic hustle, now illegal in most places but ethically ambiguous in the digital realm.

Example Usage

That email claimed a 70% discount, but the bait and switch was real—only expired products qualified.

Origin

Traditional sales tactic dating back centuries; popularized as a named offense in the 20th century

Fun Fact

The FTC actively prosecutes bait-and-switch campaigns, yet they remain a staple of aggressive ecommerce tactics worldwide

Source: Consumer protection and advertising law

Related Terms

Intermediate

loss leader

A product deliberately sold at a loss to attract customers who'll hopefully buy other profitable items, the retail equivalent of free samples at Costco. It's why printers are cheap but ink costs more than human blood.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

Day-parting

Scheduling ads to appear only during specific times of day because apparently ads at 3 AM get different results than at 3 PM (and they kinda do).

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

tear sheet

A physical page torn from a publication proving an ad ran as purchased, or its digital equivalent screenshot. The receipts that media buyers clutch when things go wrong.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

Market Fit

The magical moment when your product actually solves a problem people are willing to pay for, which happens far less often than startup founders would have you believe. Finding product-market fit is like finding a parking spot downtown: everyone says they have a strategy, but mostly it's just luck.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

creative fatigue

The phenomenon where your audience becomes so numbingly bored with seeing the same ad that performance metrics plummet faster than enthusiasm at a timeshare presentation. The marketing equivalent of playing 'Wonderwall' at every party.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

ROAS

Return On Ad Spend, a metric that tells you how many dollars you made for every dollar spent on advertising. It sounds simple until you realize the attribution model is held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

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