Contextual Fuckery Solved by Actual Humans (Who Knew?)

Now this is cool. We've already got contextual ads. We've already got behavioral ads. But we all know how much fuckery can sometimes come from those automated solutions. Wouldn't it be cool if the content of banners were matched to the content of the page by an actual, intelligent human being as opposed to a garbage in/garbage out, brainless computer?

That's exactly what Norwegian agency Mediafront did for news and entertainment site Sol. Three copywriters spent a combined 150 hours producing content resulting in 1,000 unique banners matched specifically to the sites on which they appeared. The copywriters, using a pen tablet and a custom publishing program delivered through Flash Media Server, monitored sites on which the campaign appeared and immediately created customized banner content specific to each site.

Take a look at several of the custom created banners here. If we could actually read the banners, we'd probably be even more excited about this than we actually are. This is great stuff. Common sense and doable. That is for agencies that don't fall into the "set it and forget it" category of campaign management.