Appropriateness Fail

I just submitted the image at the right (click for a bigger version) to the always-entertaining FailBlog. The image, however, isn’t as much funny as it is uncomfortable.

You see, many web sites are supported by advertising. In most cases, advertisements are either applied without regard to the content itself (e.g., randomly) or ads are selected based on what an ad software product thinks fits the content of the page (with correct, incorrect, or often-bizarre results).

I’m not sure which method was responsible for what I captured on my RSS feed reader last week. The story, from TVNewser’s feed, was one of the earliest reports I caught about the untimely death of Mr. Tim Russert. The ad text displayed inline immediately following the story reads as follows:

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.