I remember earlier this spring in a class we spoke about something similar to that instance. That same add company I believe placed a casket add in a news article on the Virginia Tech Murder Reunion.

That in my opinion screams a company with awful value’s and moral’s.

I have been very inspired recently to look at everyday environments and imitating that organized environment in a website add layout. For example when you drive down a street with a-ton of business street signs or when you walk down a sidewalk with flyer’s taped to the concrete. I want to emulate those add placement scenarios in websites and possibly social networking sites. I guess it follows the same direction with racing video games and how they place Good Year adds on the billboards.

Have a good one,
Greg

I really like your idea about how the ad agency could watch and then react in an insightful way instead of targeting ads like the following.

I once saw a news report about a boy’s suicide.

Beside it were (not joking) a casket company pitching cheap caskets and a blog on how to commit suicide.

What????

That kind of computer keyword targeting is not insightful and actually offends the viewer.

Don

I like your point of view on this subject, it inspired me to gain a new perspective towards this by an information distribution point of view.

The way I could see social networking to participate in a ad agency is that the agencies main focus should be around starting a conversation by sending a message.

A great example of how I see this social networking setting, is looking at daily conversations between a group of people or just two. In most conversations people talk about a subject and that might spin into something they loved using or loved visiting which dealt with that subject. Then that might snowball into how another individual used that product or where they explored at that location. Over time this conversation could evolve into one of the participants exploring the product or location.

I have been thinking about this just for about an hour, so this theory is a bit flaky still. The agency could look at the each user’s behavior and interest within their social group on the network. If one of those members went to Maui on a recent trip the agency could place an add for a surf company by showing a person surfing in a tropical environment. That placement could then be circulated through that social group on the network and start a conversation about surfing in Maui. So the next time they go to Maui they know how great the surfing is by their buddy going there. So why not try the brand they saw that made them think of surfing in Maui that started their conversation about going to Maui to surf.

That is my overall thought and direction of where agencies could possibly use social networking.

Killer blog, it motivated me to think of some new ideas!

Thanks