I was watching YouTube videos of the tsunami that hit Japan, and was somewhat surprised to find myself waiting for ads to finishing running before I could watch. Since I’m familiar with how the ad-serving technology works, I understand why this might occur, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Being forced to watch GEICO commercials in between horrific images of people losing their lives didn’t exactly give me positive feelings towards the ads. I’m not so naieve to believe that companys running advertisements are purposefully “profitting off of the tragedy,” but those ads definitely lowered my respect for those companys. I couldn’t help but feel some emotional transferance between feeling the horror from watching water consume entire cities full of people, and the weak attempt at humor of the ad following it. I think it’s fair to say that the former overwhelmed the latter. I’m not the only one who has expressed offense.

For example,

Antf222

This shouldn’t? have an ad before it :/ I feel like they’re profiting off a tragedy…

In response,

McHanraohanrahan

To Ant222 you are absolutely right. A 20 second banal advert at the front of footage like this is somehow more disturbing than the thing in its own right. Ive never? seen anything juxtaposed so horribly. I dont think on balance we are insane as a species but that gave me pause for a while. You’d think someone at youtube would be on top of that, but its probably just running itself by now.

Also,

larasboy

I think it’s really sad that people really put chicken? breast advertisements on a tragedy video like this. It’s wrong that they are trying to make money from videos where people are getting killed.

And (32 likes),

warwickmark

Unbelievably bad taste advertising at the beginning of this video!!!! I do hope you will be? donating all proceeds of this ad to the victims in Japan!!! There was someone on the roof of the house and i didn’t see the house later in the video, how horrific.

And (111 likes),

BootyBoxUK

How dare you advertise before? this clip! disgusting

Finally,

NickNoRtHeRnLiGhTs

for the advertisement, i had a laptop commercial, and a kid was asking his dad how the trip in japan was going.? then i see this. i guess dads not having such a great vacation

After seeing the overwelming negative response towards the ads, I emailed GEICO (my auto insurance provider) to let them know about the situation. In a few short polite sentences, I described what was happening, let them know how they could fix the problem (i.e. negative keywords), and provided a link to the video.

I received a response within an hour or two:

March 18, 2011

Dear Sean Weigold:

Thank you for using GEICO’s online services.

We apologize for the frustration that our advertising has caused and appreciate you taking the time to let us know. Please understand it is never GEICO’s intent to offend anyone with our advertising. We would be happy to help you by forwarding your concerns to our marketing department.  Thank you very much and again, we apologize for offending you.

Thank you for being part of the GEICO family and for allowing us to service your insurance needs! We are here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to provide you with excellent service.

Sincerely,

Deborah Duncan

GEICO.com

Internet Service Unit

Fax #786-221-3177

I’ve picked on GEICO because their ads happened to be playing the most when I first watched the video, but there’s a lot of culprits in this debacle. I’m looking at you:

• GEICO
• Priceline
• Red Lobseter
• Verizon
• Yahoo

Come on guys, they’re called negative keywords; learn how to use them.

And I’m especially looking at you CBS. You could have cut this off at the source by disabling ads on those videos. You should really consider firing whoever does your YouTube marketing and hiring someone competent. Of course, that’s assuming that you’re not intentionally selling advertising on top of these tragic videos to take advantage of the hundreds of thousands of views they’re receiving.

You can see the video that spurred this post (probably preceded by ads) below:

What do you think? Are some people simply overreacting, or is this truly a despicable practice? Are these companies participating out of greed or incompetence?

Posted via email from Sean Weigold Ferguson’s Personal Blog | Comment »