Justin Bieber’s drunk driving arrest is making headlines this morning, and in at least one case it is sponsored by the Toyota TeenDrive 365 campaign.
In what we assume is really bad contextual ad placement, the team at CNN has peppered their Justin Bieber arrest coverage with a Toyota backdrop.
As expected, social media users were confused and amused by the juxtaposition, and quickly took to the social network to point out the occurrence and poke fun at the placement.
@wowindc @brianstelter @CNN @Toyota love it!!! Additional sponsors Budweiser…. And Denver, your home for pot.
— schwaid (@schwaid) January 23, 2014
Other users blamed poor advertising platform standards:
Why regular advertising doesn’t work rt @wowindc Bieber arrest coverage sponsored by @Toyota‘s: teen safe driving pic.twitter.com/XOtTFc4Did
— Mitti Kalra (@MittiKalra) January 23, 2014
Contextual advertising simply doesn’t work for CNN and Justin Bieber coverage:
brilliantly wrong contextual advertising #bieber @toyota pic.twitter.com/X7lRr5GXfT
— Kevin Cahill (@cahillny) January 23, 2014
Other users were “glad” to see the sponsorship (pretty sure sarcasm was included):
Glad to see Justin Bieber’s DUI is sponsored by Toyota
— Veronica de Souza (@HeyVeronica) January 23, 2014
Nothing like mocking CNN on a Thursday morning:
@Toyota Perfect homepage takeover on @Cnn re: Teen Safety Driving. It surrounds the Bieber DUI story. Well done. #KudosOnGoodMedia
— Justin Stone (@DisnyRunr24) January 23, 2014
In many ways, contextual advertising is still in its infancy, and for that reason companies like Toyota need to think very carefully about the type of content they cover. If you have your ads placed on celebrity pages, you should probably expect some type of drunken stupor coverage to exist at some point during your campaign.
In the meantime, the Justin Beiber drunk driving arrest continues to be covered by CNN and the Toyota TeenDrive 365 campaign.
For the record — this is not “ironic” as many Twitter users have claimed, but it is pretty damn funny.
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