The Top 10 Most Unfortunate Contextual Site Ads

August 20th, 2009

By: Ben

The Silicon Valley Insider collected a handful of just plain unfortunate contextual ads, most from Google AdSense-type services, and I’ve added a few of my own findings. The problem with AdSense and its ilk, of course, is that they does not know right from wrong, so you get some pretty solid proof of the misguidedness of the “any publicity is good publicity” axiom or whatever that psychology test is that claims whenever you see something you automatically want it (may not be an actual thing, but you’ve seen that sort of study…). Because when I see a headline like “250 Sick After Eating at Local Olive Garden,” I’m not thinking THANK YOU CNN.COM FOR THE DATE IDEA. And no amount of Olive Garden coupons in the AdSense margins is going to change that. The last one is just LOL brutal.