When ad targeting goes too far – MySpace-VT

This post should give you something to consider as you build your applications. I have seen poor targeting in the past… both on the ad server side and the content serving side, but this might be one of the worst examples to-date.

Online Media Daily is reporting about MySpace displaying "Shoot the rapper, win $5,000" banners on the profiles of those involved in the Virginia Tech tragedy earlier this week. Let's forget the fact that these banners are typically BS in terms that you will need to apply for 105.5 credit cards to get the "5,000". I think the right thing for MySpace to do was immediately after the event (and when the victims were known) to remove all advertisements from the 60 or so students directly involved, either those who are in the hospital or those that lost their lives. Easy change and would have prevented this from happening.

"That's a random network ad that runs throughout out site, and it's not connected contextually because we don't place banner ads contextually on MySpace," said Steven Gold, MySpace CMO.

No matter what type of network it is, contextual or not, it could have easily have been prevented. The same thing on Facebook and all other social sites with profiles. In this case, doing the right thing would have been quicker than doing nothing.

Though on the other side, there does appear to be a lot of online profiting from this event and that is disturbing. Remember that everyone that views the kids profiles on MySpace/news on news sites/videos of the accused are making those sites lots of money. I sure hope that is not their rationale for leaving up the (any) ads. In addition, I am looking forward to seeing traffic numbers on social sites for this month and see how they let us know about where/why the traffic increases came from.