• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 11, 2015

In a rant worthy of comparison to a 60 Minutes Andy Rooney tirade, marketing expert David Murdico penned an iMediaConnection piece in which he pondered whether or not brands are squandering the YouTube ad platform. TL;DR? Yes, they are.

While enjoying a video of Bette Midler's The Rose, he was presented with a Janis Joplin version of the song...and ads for gun control and laundry detergent. Of the apparent disconnect, Murdicao wrote, "I'm not one to cast aspersions on anyone, but Janis Joplin is the last person I would place laundry detergent ads against, unless you were making an anti-hippie statement that Woodstockers should bathe more, but Woodstock is over and I think Coachella is cleaner. So, I got through it, played some more guitar - and will play even more after I post this article - but I really felt the need to write this right away and stress the need for advertisers to target ads and REALLY think through who's watching the content you're placing ads against and WHY they’re watching it."

Of course, Murdico's rant is likely to land on deaf ears. Why? Because computers can't hear. At least not in the human sense of the word. And computers -- increasingly more so today than ever before -- are the "brains" behind ad targeting. Back in the days before most of you youngin's were born, actual people -- you know, actual humans with brains -- decided where ads would appear. Yes, that would be a decidedly daunting task in today's media landscape but we'd end up with far fewer turpentine ads next to articles about pregnant teens who drink turpentine to abort their pregnancies.