Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Franx — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:49:26 -0000

Why doesn't everyone use Firefox with AdBlock Plus... I haven't seen an ad on the internet in years, and there's no reason anyone should.

https://addons.mozilla.org/...

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

dee — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:54:59 -0000

Whether intentional (I doubt it) or not, it is rather funny. Let's lighten up people!

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Pat Lathrop — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:25:55 -0000

Here is another horrible expample.

http://foundbypat.blogspot....

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

TDavid — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:26:38 -0000

Adam - check on the article, the sixth feet are a hoax. Turns out that the "severed feet" weren't human, but animal.

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:24:33 -0000

haha that made me laugh out loud

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Philip Cockrell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:22:33 -0000

GaaDang! here's the working link thats not cut off:

http://blog.firstlightera.c...

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:06:37 -0000

definitely ... that, I think, is why brand advertising like FM sells is a much better model for everyone involved

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Philip Cockrell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:58:16 -0000

The advertiser in this case, if this is proven to be a contextual link, is as much at fault as the publication here. This is one of the main failings of the contextual advertising realm, advertisers - rather than focusing on the PEOPLE who will be interested - focus too much on the WORDS that are related to them. Such a strategy doesn't take into account the target market and is essentially sea trawling as opposed to spear fishing.

I caught another good blog the other day about this, and then wrote my own post here: http://blog.firstlightera.c... which aims to provide some solutions about how to avoid innappropriate advertising like this. To me, it all relies on the advertiser being smarter about their target market, and the publications need to begin to offer solutions that allow advertisers to focus more on their target market.

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:28:06 -0000

lol that is horrible, yet hilarious

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

psupachic — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:04:57 -0000

I once had a screenshot of a similiar occassion from a local news site. The article was about a kiddy porn case. The ad was "Want to see more pictures of your children?" (or something to that effect).

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Michael — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:02:09 -0000

Well, of course CNN didn't choose to put the ad there. It was a little bit of coincidence, but mostly an illustration of how dumb contextual ad programming is. The idea is that if it's an article about cars and gas mileage, an ad for a Hybrid vehicle shows, assuming that if the viewer is interested in cars and gas mileage you're catching them at just the right time with your car ad.
Of course that same ad is likely to show when the headline reads "Youth Steals Mothers Car After Lighting Her on Fire with Gasoline" and the content bears out the details.
Contextual ads are a great idea, unfortunately they are often poorly executed due to the limit of programming. You'd be better off knowing a human chose your ad to go along with the article. Of course, no one wants to have their ad shown in an article about severed feet.

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

calinazaret — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:33:40 -0000

I'll never forget the time my husband forwarded me an article about a 12 year old boy who committed suicide over a video game and Gmail's adsense came up with "Find 12 year old boys on eBay!"

I WISH I'd taken a screen shot. I could kick myself.

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:29:04 -0000

seems unlikely it's just coincidence, but I imagine it's possible

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Amy — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:27:10 -0000

Are you sure it's not just an unfortunate coincidence with a run of network ad? I've seen similar such things on a site I work on and the ads involved were not contextually targeted.

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Adam Ostrow — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:25:05 -0000

good point, I didn't notice that ad too ... probably increases the likelihood that this actually displayed on CNN

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

steve — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:21:57 -0000

haha..burn baby burn?
ok I'm sry :P

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

@biblinski — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:18:28 -0000

The other ad visible in the first screenshot wasn't a whole lot better. "Looking for a real travel deal?" with binoculars directed on the graphic for a story coming from faraway (for many readers of that page) British Columbia. Creepy tourism?

Re: When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong

Emily Williams — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:31:07 -0000

I tend to look poorly on the site publishing the ad rather than on the company paying for it - presumably PutYourFeetUp didn't specifically ask to be included here, and I see it as CNN's job to avoid this kind of blunder.

Of course, this doesn't answer the bigger question of whether budgets would be better spent elsewhere. In my experience with Needish, banner ads aren't hugely successful, but perhaps the perfect banner could generate a lot of interest.