What do Michael Jackson, CNN and Google have in common? Apparently, Excite(ment). Excite.co.uk, to be more precise.
This unusual combination may come as a surprise but it’s all held together by the “power” of online advertising. A wacky one, if I may add… pun intended.
I finally stopped trying to run away from the flood of news items related to Michael Jackson’s death (by the way, does anyone else feel there’s way too much information running around these days?), and went to CNN.com to check the news. The headline item was (well, still is at the time I’m writing this) titled “Jacksons rely on strength of family” and it’s permalink is http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/27/jackson.family/index.html . After some mildly-worded paragraphs on how Jackson’s father was a “rough taskmaker” and the shocking information that there was some “intrafamily bickering” going on, the article sweetly ends by quoting Jermaine on what a great job his parents did. Oh well… I’m not here to debate that.
What I would like to discuss, though, is how ad networks, publishers and advertisers never fail to let me down and even exceed my expectations. Ever since the story broke, I was sure that somewhere, somehow, inappropriate ads would find their way onto unsuspecting web pages and sit there undisturbed. What I did not expect was to find them on CNN’s very own site. Right underneath the article, there was an ad slot serving Google ads, and the very first ad said:
Micheal Jackson Tickets
Buy Tickets Now For Jacko Huge- Shows In The o2 – Don’t Miss Out!
MJackson.Bookmarks.Excite.co.uk
Brilliant! I am not even going to bother discussing what a crappy text creative it is, what’s mindblowing is how the ad network (Google), the advertiser (Excite, I suppose?) and the publisher (CNN.com) have all failed at what is a rather simple task:
– Google had more than enough time to cease serving ads for Michael Jackson tickets – why are these ads still active?
– Excite (assuming it’s them who advertise) also had more than enough time to “remember” taking down the ads on their own initiative, or perhaps proactively managing the ad campaigns is not something explicitly written in the job specs of whoever is in charge of doing so.
– CNN, ultimately, is the one displaying these ads. Has no editor actually read the page??? Even if Google failed at controlling what runs in their network and the advertiser doesn’t mind running outdated ads, CNN could have very easily blocked these ads themselves. Why it hasn’t been done it’s quite a mystery. The funny (or “offending”, depends on what is your type of humor) ad is still there, half hour after I have sent CNN a message about it.
Come on, at least correct the name, please! For the curious ones, below is a screenshot of the article and the Google ad slot.
