Unfortunate ad placement

This automatic ad placement into a cnn.com story about Supreme Court nominee Miers becomes a little too appropriate. A lot of people are taking shots at Miers right now, but you too Hydroderm?

Accidental ad faux pas are becoming common on sites that randomly generate ads from various sponsors amidst varied and constantly changing content. One of my favorite Internet-related ad goofs, though of a different nature, continues to be this McDonald’s banner ad.

There goes my dream of grandchildren

This is a banner ad for the McDonald’s Dollar Menu that circulated the Internet in a few places. In case you are like the marketing department at McDonald’s and don’t see why this is funny, I’ve isolated the trouble frame below.

Pictured above: true love

“I’d hit it” means “I’d have sex with it” to the Internet generation. I’d ask how this slipped by the stuffed shirts at McDonald’s, but after seeing this I’d say they are asleep, and perhaps dead, at the swtich.

The interesting thing is that both marketing devices -the banner ad and the “i am asian” site- became popular exactly because they were so bad. Is McDonald’s actually much more shrewd than we give them credit? Is this actually a very successful viral marketing attempt?

Is it worth it if everyone is laughing at you?