I like to read recaps of late-night talk show monologues. Craig Ferguson’s really resonated with me ( paraphrased: I’m sick of this shit ).
Then I clicked to this HuffingtonPost article for a recap of Conan O’Brien. It infuriated me. http://huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/conan-addresses-boston-marathon-bombing_n_3091426.html?utm_hp_ref=comedy
As I start reading a recap of Conan O’Brien’s monologue, all of the sudden there’s audio coming out of my computer of an incredibly annoying woman talking. WTF?
I’m not watching a video. There’s no ad on the screen. I keep scrolling down several page heights.
And there it is… the Huffington Post has pre-roll video commercials running auto-play as pre-roll to a gallery after the article — more than 2050 pixels down the screen.
This is shitty beyond belief.
- The obvious issue is that I’m hearing an incredibly annoying ad for Dannon yogurt while reading a story about a terrible tragedy. This is not a great moment in content adjacency — this is quite horrible.
- Add the fact that it’s a hidden ad that just started playing , without me triggering anything — and it’s quite offensive.
- This is as horrible a “media buy” as one could imagine. ** Long Pre-Roll ads aren’t a good ad unit. 30 seconds without the ability to skip out is really bad and makes the brand look bad to users. ** Pre-Roll is supposed to be a “premium” ad unit. Selling a premium unit to client — but then delivering it as both an autoplay ad AND on an incredibly off screen page element — cheapens the unit beyond worth. This is an antagonistic unit to both the brand and consumer. As a consumer, I had to hunt to look for an ad on the page. As a brand, I pay for impressions and views. AOL/HuffingtonPost created an advertising product that effectively hid the ad unit on screen, keeping people from turning it off — or even actually viewing the ad unit.
Stuff like this doesn’t happen by accident. Having worked in advertising and publishing, some scenarios are the more likely reasons:
- AOL/HuffingtonPost was incredibly shady, and started pumping “premium” ad sales into non-premium units in order to fulfill an inventory order or take advantage of traffic spikes.
- AOL/HuffingtonPost purposefully sold a sub-standard unit to Dannon’s media buying agency, claiming it’s premium inventory.
- AOL/HuffingtonPost and Dannon’s media buying agency colluded to divert a portion of their spend of “premium units” into non-premium units like these.
The least likely scenarios ?
Dannon’s media buying agency wanted to buy units like this, because they thought it was a great investment for their client.
This is all just a mistake, and AOL/HuffingtonPost is not greedy or doing anything shady – their technology and advertising teems are just grossly inept.
If I had to choose only one option, I’d guess that AOL/HuffingtonPost is trying to earn extra revenue by hiding “premium” videos on traffic spike ( Boston tragedy related ) pages. Welcome to the wonderful world of online publishing.
I feel sorry for Dannon and am really disgusted by AOL/HuffingtonPost. I can’t seem to figure out who buys digital inventory for Dannon; Havas’ MPG unit ( now Havas ) handled TV media for Dannon as far back as December, but there doesn’t seem to be any mention about online buying.
Attached, a stitched screen…
The blue line is approximately 2050 pixels down the screen; the ad unit is the “embedded gallery” directly below it. The average browser window hight right now is around 750pixels, making that ad unit appear on the 4th page.
On Advertising and the Boston Marathon Tragedy


