Advertising on the internet

A few months ago I started running Google ads at the botton of this blog. Google has some software that reviews the material on the page and cycles through ads which may (or may not) pertain to the recent posts. Sometimes I laughed when I saw ads for places selling anti-Bush stuff. Well, some companies didn't laugh when they realized which pages Yahoo had placed their ads on.

KPRC reported last month that major advertisers including PepsiCo Inc. (PEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Georgia-Pacific Corp. (GP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. removed their ads after the station found the ads were appearing on Yahoo user-created chat rooms that were aimed at sex with children.

"As soon as we found out we pulled our ads," said Pepsi spokesman Dave DeCecco. "We were totally unaware our ads were associated with those chat rooms -- and that was back in April."

"We were horrified to find out we were on those sites," said Georgia-Pacific spokeswoman Robin Keegan. "As soon as we found out, we pulled that advertising."

Having seen some of the crap on the internet (and I'm not just referring to Howard Dean quotes), I'm sure a lot of companies are having their names associated with things they would rather not be connected to even accidentally. I still think advertising will power the internet but there will be more growing pains like this.