Advertising Is Good For You

Tragically inappropriate contextual ads

Business Insider has put together a collection of Google contextual ads that illustrate the drawback of the medium.

 CLICK HERE to see Business Insider's complete collection of unfortunate contextual ads.

CLICK HERE to see another troubling example I posted earlier this year.

Contextual advertising is mean to baby squirrels

I was watching a heartwarming video of a mama cat feeding the baby squirrels she had adopted when an ad for "Squirrel Removal Services" popped up.

Next, an ad for "Louisianna Cajun Foods, shipper of meats, seafood, sweets" appeared.

Contextual advertising can be scary.

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If you love animals even when they're not on your plate, you can watch the video HERE.

Maine in June

Source: Dave's Redneck Photos

Unfortunate Contextual Advertising by I. P. Phreeley

Source: shindohd

You may be sick of turkey sooner than you think

CMM News posted this unfortunate juxtaposition of advertising and news from last week's Daily Mail.

Click image to enlarge.

Turns out contextual advertising's biggest contribution may be to bloggers looking for a cheap laugh

According to an article in yesterday's MediaWeek, a recent study suggests that contextual advertising isn't all that much more effective than out-of-context advertising.

You can draw your own conclusions about the context, or lack thereof, of the following online ad:
 

Source: Chicken Crap

Four VERY badly placed ads

Click images to enlarge

Oddee features more examples of unfortunate ad placement.

Oops

One more example of unfortunate contextual advertising...

Source: Cherry Flava

Is it me?

Unfortunate Contextual Advertising

 

Click here to see more examples of unfortunate contextual advertising.

Source: Spluch

Contextual Advertising Gone Awry

As AdRants points out, you'd think the technology that makes contextual advertising possible would have been upgraded to avoid nightmarish ad placements like the following. (Click an image to enlarge.)

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What is contextual advertising?

Advertising on a Web site that is targeted to the specific individual who is visiting the Web site. A contextual ad system scans the text of a Web site for keywords and returns ads to the Web page based on what the user is viewing, either through ads placed on the page or pop-up ads. For example, if the user is viewing a site about sports, and the site uses contextual advertising, the user might see ads for sports-related companies, such as memorabilia dealers or ticket sellers. Contextual advertising also is used by search engines to display ads on their search results pages based on what word(s) the users has searched for. -- Webopedia

Ethics: Do you let the 'killer' stay or do you warn the advertiser?

Here's a spread from yesterday's edition of the UK's The Independent; on the left is the story of the US gunman who killed the Amish girls; on the right is a retail ad touting a "killer value." (Click image to enlarge.)

Over the years, I've worked with publishers who would have considered it unethical to give the advertiser a heads up so it could replace the ad with something more appropriate. While I would absolutely agree that advertisers have no business sticking their noses into editorial decisions, there was no greater purpose served by allowing this spread to run as is.

At the risk of sounding like a smartypants, I never would have tempted fate by making the word 'killer' so prominent in a newspaper ad. I've been in advertising long enough to know that if anything can go wrong, it will.