I am reading Wil Wheaton’s excellent blog. In the last post I recieved in my RSS-reader there was a small targeted ad at the bottom. Wil is writing about a charity poker tournament to raise money for the people that are affected by the terrible hurricane Katarina that has destroyed large parts of Louisiana. The ad at the bottom is for hotels in New Orleans…

Seth Godin has had a little discussion on the topic of targeted ads. In most cases they are excellent and give a win-win situation. The reader gets ads that are interesting because they are based on the information that he or she seems to be interested in. The advertiser gets a targeted audience.

I find it completely OK that the ads in a blog are about remote controls if I read a post about exactly that – remote controls.

But, the system is usually automatic. Ads are automatically targeted based on the text on the page. That can lead to very improper ads.

However, in this case the ad does not mess up the fact that Wil is doing a great job raising money for the people that need it right now! Great job.