The wrong place at the wrong time
You're a brand advertiser. You know you have to be on the internet, but you're not exactly sure how. So you retain an agency. It comes up with cool creative and formulates a campaign. The buy begins. Everyone's excited. Then all hell breaks loose.
Earlier this month, Business Insider published an article that further exposed the dirty little secret of online advertising: Brands are paying for ads that show up in very inappropriate locations. Maybe inappropriate is the wrong word. I mean really, really bad content -- the kind that, if viewed at work, could get you fired.
There are no analytics that can measure the damage brands can suffer from bad ad placements. Bad placements, or "ad fails," are still an issue that just won't go away. At best, we are talking about wasted impressions and money. Worst case, the advertising has a negative brand impact and affects consumer perception and brand favorability. Just for fun, we did an accidental mini case study at the office.
First, my disclaimer: My company evaluates what is on a web page to help a buyer or a seller target. Some of the more interesting URLs that surface catch the attention, and maybe the imagination, of the employees. Thus, we were introduced to the Big Girls Bras brand. By using this example, we are not picking on anyone. In fact, given the wide variety of URLs we see, we often say "we do not judge." Trust me, this example is tame.
At our marketing director's recommendation, a few others visited this site to see what the brand was all about. Lots of team members had a chuckle, but the site dropped a cookie on our browsers and the ad followed us all around the web. All of the placements that follow were seen by Peer39 employees within a three-day span. The placements ranged from being an uncomfortable association to an outright waste. But the good news is that there is an easy fix. We'll explore solutions to each of the following bad placements in this article.
