Those guys at Yahoo are so clever.
I got through two or three paragraphs of a USA Today story about Police monitoring hundreds of people prior to the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics before I noticed the advertisement running in the sidebar.
It’s an ad promoting the new Steven Spielberg movie, “Munich” which focuses on the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the Summer Olympics.
What context.
I’m going to assume that a computer program made the decision to run this movie ad next to a story about security precautions ahead of the games. But, wouldn’t it be interesting if the following exchange happened between the ad and news departments at Yahoo.
Yahoo Ad Guy: Hey Bernie – I’ve got a ton of these “Munich” ads to run. You guys have a story or two I can use to as background?
Yahoo News Guy: Uh, yeah Chuck. I’ve got one here on Steven Spielberg as “typical family man” – you know, taking his kids to school, to the store, just like a normal guy. I got another one which looks back on the making of ET. Oh, I’ve got one here about a few Italian policemen who are combing through surveillance data on “questionable” people prior to the Winter Olympics which starts in a few weeks.
Yahoo Ad Guy: Yeah, sweet! That’s the one. OK, you run that one on the 27th and I’ll place the flash animated ads in a box within the story, about 10 pixels away from paragraph two. My boys at Universal Pictures will love it. You know, they told me that if we do them right on this one they’ll give us the next buy instead of Google. You Rock Bernie.
Yahoo News Guy: No problemo Chuck. Hey, hows the wife and kids?
Or something like that…