Fox’s bloody t-shirt: Newtown images shows risks of automated ads [View all]
Fox’s bloody t-shirt: Newtown images shows risks of automated ads
A Fox news story about the Newtown tragedy came with an ad for a bloody t-shirt while Facebook showed an ad for a shooting game. In the past, editors could have screened these ads — this is less possible online where fewer humans are involved in the ad-buying process.
Newspapers are careful about where their ads appear. They make sure, for instance, that flight specials don’t appear beside plane crash articles or that Taco Bell coupons aren’t printed beside food-poisoning stories. For online publishers, it’s much harder to screen inappropriate ads.
Fox News is a case in point. On Friday, the day of the Newtown massacre, Fox published an ad for a novelty T-shirt that appeared like this:
?w=604&h=319
How did this happen?
Fox News did not respond to a request for comment, but the t-shirt company and advertising-industry people I spoke with provided enough information to piece together what happened. The unfortunate ad is not the result of Fox’s insensitivity or someone’s screw-up, but instead just reflects the reality of online advertising.
According to Mike Grouse of Bad Idea T-Shirts, the company has been running the bloody shirt ad for the last year. On Friday, it moved to take the ad down.”Yes, we removed the ads from Google upon becoming aware of the tragedy. We worked directly with our Google rep to expedite the process. We also blocked Fox News from receiving our ads,” he told us by email.
http://paidcontent.org/2012/12/18/foxs-bloody-t-shirt-newtown-images-shows-risks-of-automated-advertising/
= new reply since forum marked as read