Phillies

Today in Unfortunate Ad Targeting: A Nationals Ticket Ad on CB

By Kyle Scott

Published: Mar 30th, 2012 · 2:30 PM EDT

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Oops.

Ad networks frequently have a way of displaying the most unfortunate of advertisements. For those who don’t know, many times the ads you see on websites are not sold directly by a given site. Rather, they are generated by code placed from Google or, in our case, The Big Lead. Local advertisers (like Drinker’s, BC Sports and Philly Phaithful) are direct, but some of the other ads you see on this site are generated from a larger network. Sometimes those other ads are behavioral, meaning what you see is tailored to you based on your browsing history (we’re not the creepers here, just about all interwebtual ads function this way), and other times those ads are fed to a site based on its content and location, among other factors.

So, I was a bit surprised when reader Kyle sent me an email yesterday, explaining that he had seen an ad for Nationals tickets on this here website. And today, I saw one as well.

This, of course, is hilarious because the Nationals are going out of their way to take back their (usually empty) ballpark and their ads are finding their way onto… well, a site organizing a massive takeover to take back the park from the folks who are trying to take back their park.

It’s not the Nats' fault, of course. It’s because I’ve been to their website before.  So if you see a Nats ad on this site– no, they’re not (directly) paying me. But I’ll gladly take a few pennies for each ad that pops up.