When Good Contextual Ads Go Bad…

by Keith Browning
 
The highly targeted nature of Contextual Advertising makes it very attractive to advertisers.

If I’m reading an article about travel and I’m then served an ad about hotels or flights, you would expect a relatively high click thru rate on that ad, certainly compared to a more general ad about buying a watch for example.

Contextual Ads work in a very simple way and this is a big reason why they are so attractive.  An ad network, such as Google, will trawl a web page’s content, determine its topic from keywords within the content and then serve up ads relevant to the page’s topic. Many times these ads are text based but they can also take many other forms, like a traditional banner style ad.

Below we see an example of Contextual Ads in action. The article is about skin care, specifically face creams. This is the content that the visitor to the site is consuming. The ad network, Google in this instance, then serves ads related to skin care.

Relevant & highly targeted – a perfect example of Contextual Advertising in action.

However, sometimes Good Contextual Ads Go Bad…

This is an ad that was just served to me on CNN.com. It’s a story about a horrific incident including a death inside a storage container. What am I shown next? It’s an advert for me to buy a storage container – right in the middle of the article. Though you can argue it’s “relevant”, I’m probably unlikely to be in the mood to purchase a storage container. In fact, to most people it would seem that CNN and / or Buyerzone have done something in really bad taste.

A quick Google search reveals this seems to be happening quite regularly, as we can see with New York Times below. Here an article about a tragic ferry accident means I'm being served an add about winning a Cruise! This is definitely something all marketing managers need to be aware of, particularly if you're the publisher of content but also if you’re the company being advertised. 

Not exactly the PR you'd aspire to for your brand!