You Came for the Net Worth. The Famous Faces at the Bottom Came for You.

You opened the page for the number. Jay-Z at $1.8 billion. Madonna at $850 million. The table, the house, the cars, maybe the ex. Then you kept scrolling, because of course you did, and the page turned into a grid.

Eight little boxes. A famous face in half of them. Headlines that sound like they were written by someone who has never met a fact they couldn’t tease. “You may like.” “Around the web.” “You won’t believe.” You were checking a net worth. The bottom of the page is a red carpet for ads that have nothing to do with it.

That’s the whole trick.

Faces stop you. Famous faces make you tap.

Your brain is rude about this. A face hits you before the headline does. The company behind a lot of those “you may like” boxes even said it out loud. In January 2026, researchers at Columbia, Harvard, the Technical University of Munich, and Carnegie Mellon looked at more than 500 million impressions on Taboola’s network. A large, clear human face, they found, is what makes an ad feel human enough to tap. Taboola called faces the secret ingredient.

Famous faces are the deluxe version. You already know the cheekbones. You already have an opinion. On a celebrity page you’re already in face mode, staring at the person whose money you came to audit. Then the grid offers you more faces, slightly more urgent, slightly more “wait, what?” That isn’t a coincidence. It’s leftover attention from the biography, recast as bait.

Honestly, the face is doing more work than the words. The headline only has to finish the job.

The awkward bit: a lot of those ads are not the celebrity’s deal

Here’s the part that still surprises people who live on these pages. The person in the box often did not agree to be there.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has been chasing this for a decade. In 2017 it went after diet pills, muscle powders, and wrinkle creams sold through fake sites dressed up like Men’s Health and Good Housekeeping. The pages put Paula Deen, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Statham, and Dr. Oz in the story as if they’d used the stuff. The FTC said they never endorsed any of it. One “special report” claimed Will Ferrell packed on muscle in three weeks. Ferrell had nothing to do with it.

Oprah Winfrey got the same treatment. In 2015 the FTC shut down a Glendale outfit called Sale Slash that pitched green coffee and garcinia cambogia on fake news pages. Affiliates even mailed “Hi! Oprah says it’s excellent.” She did not.

The playbook didn’t retire. In January 2024, Taylor Swift’s face and a cloned voice showed up promising free Le Creuset cookware after a “packaging error.” Le Creuset said there was no partnership. Swift was not giving away Dutch ovens.

Britain’s ASA is just as allergic. In July 2024 it banned meal-kit ads from Simmer after the brand spliced Dragons’ Den footage of Deborah Meaden and Sara Davies praising a rival, then cut to Simmer’s own meals. The Dragons hadn’t even been talking about Simmer. The ruling was dry. If it looks like an endorsement, you need the endorsement.

The FTC’s own native-ad guide even uses a “From Around the Web” box as the example. If the tile looks like the site’s journalism, you have to say it’s an ad before anyone taps. A lot of the grid still hopes you won’t squint at the tiny “Sponsored” line.

So when a movie-star jawline appears under a Katy Perry net-worth table, don’t assume Katy got a cheque. Assume someone rented the shape of fame.

Who is riding faces on celebrity pages this week

The boxes change. Diet one hour, insurance the next, a “weird trick” that has been weird since 2012. They are this week’s celebrity-net-worth tiles from OpenAdLibrary, not a greatest-hits reel. The cards do not show landing URLs, so those stay blank. None of these people endorsed a thing by showing up in a box.

Gene Hackman, 18 hours on Taboola. The tile showed up on gagana.lk. The photo is paparazzi, not a premiere. Hackman is old in this crop. Thin white hair, grey mustache, tan baseball cap with black wraparound sunglasses parked on the brim. Olive Columbia vest over a grey t-shirt. He is looking down, outdoors, a blur of shop signs behind him. The headline does the crying for him: “Gene Hackman’s Net Worth Left His Family In Tears.” A legend in dad clothes. A tear. A tap.

Dennis Rodman, one day old, also Taboola. This one sat on wjhg.com. You do not need the caption. Bleached mohawk, purple-pink eyeshadow, false lashes, a nose stud, a lip ring, silver hoops, neck tattoos. Pale-blue tropical jacket printed with palm trees and Santa Claus in beach shirts. A fuzzy NBC peacock sits on the white wall behind him. Headline: “Dennis Rodman Net Worth Might Surprise You.” Of course it might. That is why the jacket is in the box.

Chumlee, 12 days, Taboola on nbcnews.com. Pawn Stars’ Austin “Chumlee” Russell in a black tuxedo and bow tie, which would count as a glow-up if he had taken the cap off. He did not. Black flat brim, thin red stripe, wavy hair out the sides, goatee, a little smirk. Event backdrop with a Bodybuilding.com mark and a World Mixed Martial Arts Awards shield. Headline: “Chumlee’s New Net Worth Makes The Headlines.” The joke is that the headline is the headline.

The advertiser on those three tiles is called Crypto Deal Flow. That is the odd part, and it is enough. A crypto-branded shop is buying celebrity money teasers. The piece is still about the faces.

Greta Thunberg, 11 days, Revcontent. theplayarena bought this one on theodysseyonline.com. Solid bright blue. Greta mid-shout, brows down, mouth open, pink crew-neck, a black mic at her chin. Headline: “Greta Thunberg: Her Total Net Worth is Unacceptable.” Outrage as a money hook. Same net-worth nosiness as the others, just angrier. Still not her ad.

Two more are still running if you keep scrolling, not extra slots. Paperela has had Kevin Costner in a tan tuxedo and black glasses on Taboola via eonline.com for 70 days, “The Net Worth Kevin Costner Owns Says it All.” Simple Health Tips, a health brand, is riding Joel Osteen on Taboola with “Joel Osteen’s Net Worth Left Us With No Words.”

If the face in the tile is the same person whose biography you just finished, that still isn’t proof of a deal. It can just mean the ad followed you onto their page.

Why this works so well under a net-worth article

You already opened your wallet in your head.

A LOLWOT page is a money mood. Salary, houses, the Maybach, the $90 million Bel Air place, the champagne brand on the side. You came to be nosy about someone else’s pile. That curiosity doesn’t switch off when the FAQ ends. It leaks. The grid is built to catch the drip.

The jump is short. You’ve just been staring at how they got that rich. The next thought is how ordinary people keep money, lose weight, buy insurance, fix their skin. Finance ads, diet ads, and those “one old trick” tiles love that leftover hunger. You’ve been looking at faces the whole time. The next face feels like more of the same article. It isn’t.

The layout helps. After the bio, the table, and the FAQ, most celebrity pages drop a labelled box that mixes real related stories with paid tiles. Other LOLWOT-style bios sit next to a thumbnail that will take you somewhere else entirely. That’s why the same grid shows up under Celine Dion and Clint Eastwood and a rapper you only searched because of a rumour. The page was about a person. The widget is about a product. You’re the overlap.

How to tell a real story from a widget ad

A real LOLWOT piece names the person, dates the money, and stays on the page. A widget ad wants you off it.

Look at the face first. If it isn’t the celebrity whose net worth you opened, you’re not reading a related bio. You’re looking at rented attention. Then look for the small print. “Sponsored.” “Ad.” A tiny “by Taboola” or Outbrain credit hiding under “you may like.” The FTC has been clear since 2015 that an ad dressed like a news headline is still an ad, and the label has to show up before the tap.

The headline is another tell. Ours are greedy about numbers. Theirs are greedy about mystery. “Jay-Z net worth is $1.8 billion” is a claim you can argue with. “You won’t believe what she uses now” is a cliff with no bottom. If the click leaves lolwot.com, you left the biography.

Real deals live where the celebrity actually speaks. Their own Instagram, a Super Bowl spot, a contract with a disclosure. They don’t hide in a mystery grid under someone else’s FAQ. And if Oprah “lost 17 lbs in 4 weeks with no special diet,” that isn’t news. That’s the old fake-news script the FTC already sued over.

Is the celebrity getting paid for that box?

Usually no. If they had a real deal, you’d see it on their feed, with a disclosure, not in a grid under a stranger’s biography.

Why do these show up so hard on net-worth pages?

Because you already came to stare at money. The ads are just hoping you have a little staring left.

Nobody is asking you to stop being nosy. That’s the sport. Just know the grid at the bottom is nosy about you, too. The famous face is the bait. The product is the point. The net-worth number you came for is still the only honest figure on that stretch of the page.

Sources: Taboola / Columbia study, 28 Jan 2026 · FTC, Tarr Inc, Nov 2017 · FTC, Sale Slash, May 2015 · FTC Native Advertising Guide · NYT, Taylor Swift / Le Creuset, 9 Jan 2024 · ASA, Simmer Ltd, 17 July 2024