When Broad Matching Go Wrong

I got my iPhone last week but I haven’t had a chance to try and set it up yet. I was looking for different websites on you can “Activate your iPhone” and was of course using Google.

I was on one of the better hacker sites on the subject, when I saw a Google AdSense ad in the left hand column:

This ad is linking to a website for a yoghurt drink.

Do you see the problem? I’m looking to hack my iPhone and it is assumed I’m actually interested in a probiotic yoghurt. Now to be fair to Google, their algorithms are smart enough to stop this happening, except if you get your traditional agency to set up your campaign and they forget to turn off broad matching of your targeted search terms.

This is actually very important, not only to ensure the relevancy of the audience who will see your ad, but also to try to limit potential brand issues where you ad is delivered on a content partner site, that you might not want your brand to be associated with. In this case, I don’t think the Activate people would be too concerned, but it is still something to be aware of. Some of the placements you get with Google’s content network are a little questionable so it may not be the way that the campaign is configured, or maybe as an iPhone owner, I’m in the target market for probiotic shots?