Documenting the hilarious, weird world of Wish ads washing up on Facebook

Olly Browning
3 min readNov 26, 2017

Are you in the market for a hood for your cat? Or maybe an ancient Chinese torture device?

Well, it’s your lucky day, because Wish, the super cheap shopping app that offers “cut-rate prices by shipping directly from manufacturers in China”(Forbes) has been going advert-crazy on Facebook lately.

Huge congrats for ad copy that features neither jackets OR coats

In what appears to be a global Facebook ad campaign, which seems to pull through random product listings from their app, I’ve seen quite a few examples of their somewhat… eclectic ranges. From the hilarious to the downright weird, here’s a collection of the oddest products they’ve had to offer.

Please note these ads get progressively NSFW, yet somehow they got through the Facebook algorithm, so don’t shoot the messenger. I just report the news.

“Swear down wish is the oddest advert on facebook, what is this n why would A want it?” — @imogenblofeld

“Does anybody else get really strange wish adverts popping up on their Facebook?........ Who the fuck actually buys this stuff?” — Michelle

“Can someone tell me why my Facebook feed an advert for wish comes up and this is there? IS THAT A TONGUE. Someone please tell me it’s soap for something” — @emma_hirst98

Note: these next examples are REALLY NSFW, proceed with caution.

This is insanity. This is like that time a bot on Amazon went wild and started producing phone cases featuring images of ‘toenail fungus cell phone cover’ or ‘grease traps’ or ‘pair of feet with deformed right toe with gout inflammation’ — seriously, look it up for another hilarious read.

I have nothing else to say except:

  1. Why isn’t Facebook catching this?!
  2. Why even bother advertising these products in the first place??!!
  3. WT actual F ???!!!

If you’re getting these weird ads too, PLEASE send them to me and I’ll add them to the collection — I remove names from screenshots but happy to credit you.

Hi, new readers! A big thanks for your tweets and especially to Lara O’Reilly at The Wall Street Journal for linking to this post in CMO Today. For my more regular and stupid posts, my blog is up at yourolly.com and you can follow me on Twitter @yourolly. Cheers for reading.

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Olly Browning

A freelance writer and graphic designer in London. Follow me on Twitter @yourolly.