Article and Ad Contradiction

[MerlinCross]

Much like my twitter topic, this is been something that's kinda been on my mind. And it might be a bad time to talk about it but a certain webpage made me decide to make a topic.

So a site makes an article, opinion, news story. It takes a stance against an issue, and it might even say that the website as a whole is against this. And then..., one of the ads right next to it is basically selling the opposite. I'm sure the current topic is in everyone's mind but I've seen this happen a noticeable amount over the years.

"This model car is bad for the environment" Oh look an ad that sells that model car.
"Please support local shops" Sponsored by Wal-mart.
"Here's a piece about sexism" - with an ad that says 'Please come play with me my lord'.
"We as a website feel that X is wrong" But please buy X

Other people have to find these things just to be a little weird. I mean money is money yes but if you're against something, why have someone sell that thing to the person reading the article? It'd be like "We are for Gun control, but just ignore that ad down there that takes you to Colt's website".

Now I don't know how adspaces actually work on the website's side. Do they just get a box that runs say 10-15 random ads that they don't have control of? So maybe they do get unlucky. If that's the case, maybe someone can tell me that's how it does work.

Thoughts, discussion?

 

[Andy Shandy]

I'm going to take a guess and say this is unsubtly about Polygon?

Anyway, you're correct, in most cases, a website does not choose the ads that are displayed on their website beforehand. I imagine that most websites sign up with the ad agency that offers them they most - within reason anyway, not many websites are going to sign up to advertise InsertYourChoiceOfPornWebsiteHere . com. (had to put a space in, just in case this is/was an actual porn site =P)

It's just an unfortunate incident when this sort of thing happens (for the website anyway, the rest of us can get a good chuckle out of it) and then I assume the website asks the ad agency to pull that particular ad.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

Most websites don't handle banner ads themselves, or try to handle as little of it as possible. This is done with the help of external services such as Google AdSense [http://www.google.com/adsense/start/]. Advertisers pay to have their ads hosted by AdSense, and that money is given to the website. This is beneficial for the advertisers as they can have their ad shown across many websites, beneficial for the websites as it allows them to worry less about banner ads, and beneficial for Google as it's made them lots of money.

Why am I mentioning this? Because these cases often aren't the fault of the website themselves. Websites do have the option to look at and take ads out of circulation, but having to moderate every ad that could potentially be displayed on your website as a result of AdSense is a tiresome effort.

As for why these ads sometimes contradict the articles? This involves talking a little bit about what services like AdSense exactly do. Each ad is treated as an auction: The advertisers get some information about the page and the visitor, they place bids and the highest bid gets the ad space. The bids are determined by computers using a variety of techniques. One common technique used is simply searching the webpage for keywords. If a lot of emphasis is put on this technique and the keywords are poorly chosen, then you get situations like that.

TL;DR: Often the website themselves don't know every ad that is displayed on their website, and basing how much you are willing to bid for ad space on keyword search alone is stupid.

I'm going to take a guess and say this is unsubtly about Polygon?

The thing I hate the most about that Polygon screenshot is that you can blatantly see the AdSense logo in the top-right corner, yet people think Polygon is solely responsible for this.

 

[MerlinCross]

I'm going to take a guess and say this is unsubtly about Polygon?

Yes and no. Yes it's a bit about Polygon because that's the thing that pushed me into make this topic. But it's been something I've considered for quite some time now.

I recall a few years ago I bounced onto a news site(Because I was doing research for a paper). One of the side article plugs was about violent media and after reading it, found it to be one of those reports we all roll our eyes at. And yet one of the ads was for GTA(Or maybe Borderlands 2, been awhile).

To put it a different way; I've seen it enough to think about discussing it and yet didn't because it wasn't common enough.

The thing I hate the most about that Polygon screenshot is that you can blatantly see the AdSense logo in the top-right corner, yet people think Polygon is solely responsible for this.

Don't hold them or really any site 100% responsible, mainly because I've admitted and will do so now, I honestly had no idea how ads were actually handled.

I've kinda put the blame on advertisers for trying to still force a lot of annoying ad practices(They've largely replaced the yelling smilies). But thanks for explaining it to me.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

Don't hold them or really any site 100% responsible, mainly because I've admitted and will do so now, I honestly had no idea how ads were actually handled.

I've kinda put the blame on advertisers for trying to still force a lot of annoying ad practices(They've largely replaced the yelling smilies). But thanks for explaining it to me.

Fair enough.

I recall a few years ago I bounced onto a news site(Because I was doing research for a paper). One of the side article plugs was about violent media and after reading it, found it to be one of those reports we all roll our eyes at. And yet one of the ads was for GTA(Or maybe Borderlands 2, been awhile).

I have two favourite examples:
[ul]
[li]There was once a thread on Kongregate's forums about how much The Jonas Brothers suck. This had an ad above it saying 'Which Jonas Brother will you marry?'[/li]
[li]An ad on YouTube said 'How much of a Justin Bieber fan are you?' The video was by The Onion about how Justin Bieber was really a 40 year old man faking his age so that he could sleep with young women.[/li]
[/ul]