7 seats left:

Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Bad Ad Placement of the Day: NYT Cruises for Trouble

One would think this far into contextual targeting it wouldn’t yield ridiculous pairings with inappropriate content. But sadly one would be wrong. The New York Times today committed a textbook boo-boo by putting a huge half-page ad for Holland America Line cruises next to a story about a rescue attempt of a crippled Italian cruise ship. There is a bit of a pattern here, since the NYT slapped an ad for a different cruise line next to a story about a crippled ship in January. The Times appears to have fixed this issue by mid-morning. Thanks to ad targeting company Admantx for screenshot.

More in Media

Illustration of a performer balancing money weights on a tightrope, symbolizing how brand safety tools help marketers maintain performance and control.

Media Briefing: Publishers turn to paid audience acquisition tactics to tackle traffic losses

Publishers facing declining organic traffic are buying audiences through paid ads and traffic arbitrage, and using AI tools to do it.

When bots look like buyers: agentic traffic causing new publisher headaches

The real issue is measurement: without a clear way to separate agentic visitors from humans, some buyers are getting jittery — and a few are already pulling ad spend. 

Job cuts hit 22-year October high as retail layoffs from Amazon to Target mount ahead of holidays

Employers slashed 153,074 jobs last month, up 175% from a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.