Monday 16 August 2010

Pre roll ads - when ads and content need caution applied


I just read the news of a gastly accident during the "California 200" an off-road truck race event that occured this Saturday night.

A racing truck, travelling through at dusk through the Mojave desert flipped when taking on a 'rock pile' and crashed into a group of spectators. The resulting carnage left 8 dead and many more badly injured.

Naturally in the digital age, people were filming the event on phones and cameras - some of this footage found its way very quickly to the traditional news outlets and then to You Tube.

Unfortunately, it seems no one at Google/You Tube pre-checked the pre-roll ad that CBS had running in the lead into this horrific news item. The result - an ad (at least when I viewed twice) for All-State insurance featuring a car getting rear-ended.

Clearly this is a hugely unfortunate error - probably due to lack of proper tagging, but also due perhaps to a lack of supervision by the agency/CBS/You Tube/and maybe even the client Allstate. Either way, lessons need to be learnt form this as more and more digital display money goes into pre-roll ads and more viewers use You Tube as a primary source of news footage.