In theory, one of the ways in which the Internet is supposed better than traditional broadcasting for media businesses is that it provides better opportunities for content advertising campaigns, where advertisers can have their ads automatically placed with complementary content.
Ideally, that means that an article about shoes, for example, would get matched with an ad for a company like Zappos, while online videos featuring cats would get paired with ads for cat-related products, rather than vice-versa. Today's technology makes it possible for advertisers to use content-matching algorithms that are designed to pick up on certain words or phrases within Internet-based content to automatically pair the article with an ad for a related product without ever being reviewed by human beings.
That can be a problem, because sometimes, the ads that get paired with Internet-based content in this way are things that the advertiser would really rather avoid because the association that results may not produce the desired positive outcome.
Keep that in mind as you look at the following screenshot of an article that appeared at PJ Media on Friday, 18 April 2014. This is what we like to call a juxtaposition fail:
There's more to the article than what is shown in our screen capture - the full story is available here.
But back to the juxtaposition fail, thanks to the efficiency and effectiveness of the automated content-matching algorithms used by today's Internet advertisers, we can now place the face of Wendy R. Davis, a politician who has attracted national attention and is currently seeking higher office in the state of Texas, with a news article about how the FBI is currently pursuing a corruption investigation into her past business dealings.
In a sense, that means that Wendy R. Davis' campaign is paying to expose Wendy Davis as a corrupt politician to potential voters in time for the next elections.
At the very least, if you see any ads for Wendy Davis with this article, you should be sure to click on them. As long as they're paying for them, we'd like them to get their money's worth!