I’m sure there are worse cases (perhaps involving airlines and plane crashes), but advertising cruises on this YouTube clip is pretty bad example of contextual ad targeting. I doubt this drove many sales despite the “60% off / $100 cash back” deal.
Related: my old employer (Channel 4) made the FAIL Blog last week due to some unfortunate ad targeting.
Business Insider covers some interesting research from Rocket Fuel about online advertising, which includes:
#7: Non-contextual advertising can be very effective. We’ve seen Automotive ads work extremely well on Finance content, for example.
Google recently announced it was changing the way ads were selected for placement alongside Gmail messages:
Until now, the ads you’ve seen next to a message were picked based on the content of that message only. For example, if you’re looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago, you might see ads about flights, restaurants or other things relevant to your trip to Chicago.
But sometimes, the ads related to a particular message aren’t good enough. Rather than show less relevant ads, Gmail can now instantaneously serve ads based on another recent message on the same page of your inbox, helping make the ads more relevant to you. For example, if your friend sends you a message to say happy birthday, but there aren’t any good ads to show related to birthdays, you might see ads related to another message in your inbox instead — like flights to Chicago.
You don’t need a business plan. You don’t need to have an MBA. All you need is a great idea. Anything is possible and you can accomplish it.
- Ron Conway
&
1 year ago
