• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 2, 2015

When it comes to programmatic-buying’s audience vs. context debate, this morning’s panel at the Publishing Insider Summit gave some practical advice: Don’t lose your head, literally.

Richard Routman, CRO of Sporting News’s Perform Group, cited a recent example where a big consumer brand’s programmatic buy placed their pre-roll video ad in front of an ISIS beheading shown on YouTube.

Routman said the U.S. ad market has essentially been unaware of that incident, which he said was “algorithmically” driven by the brand’s audience targeting goals, but failed to identify the contextual environment the audience saw their spot in.

“You don’t want to be the official sponsor of a beheading,” he quipped.