Someday marketers are going to wake up and realize that humans are, in fact , a much needed entity in the creation and management of online ad campaigns and that some aspects of those campaigns shouldn’t be left to a bunch of servers in some sever farm in the middle of nowhere. This latest contextual corrigendum comes courtesy of IntelliTXT, that company that places annoying roll over pop ups linked to text in articles on many sites such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In this AJC.com article about the sudden death of Anna Nicole Smith’s son, we find an ad offering 10 to 20 percent off Smiths at Target as if Anna might want to drop by Target and pick up a new son with her credit card.
WTF? Exactly what product called a Smith would be on sale at Target? Exactly. None. It’s a made up keyword designed to make a Target ad pop up when ever the word Smith – a very common word – appears on a site that uses IntelliTXT. Who ever buys media for Target knows this. IntelliTXT knows this. I wonder how Target feels about gaining a few sales at the expense of someone’s death.
Oh, we’re sure we’re going to hear from IntelliTXT on this one informing us that the ad is the result of some fourth party twice removed three layers down on some affiliate network that doesn’t care about the quality of advertising, only the quantity. Well, IntelliTXT doesn’t have to allow this and the Atlanta Journal Constitution doesn’t have to serve these ads.
Anyway, this insanity could easily be lessened if more people checked out a company called Mochilla which leaves the human element in the contextual advertising equation.
