Product placement does not work

The latest 007 movie has over 20 product placements. Apparently, a recent Sylvester Stallone movie had over 100 product placements (more than one a minute). Companies spend a LOT of money (sometimes tens of millions of dollars!) to get their product into a movie. But does it work?

A recent report on AdAge says not only does it not work, it works against the brand. A brain scan of people watching a movie showed that at times, when a product appeared on the screen, it actually gets deleted from the brain.

Hey companies, tell you what, I've got a great service for you: just give one million usd, and I'll promise not to place it in a movie. I now have evidence my campaign will work better than yours!

Capitalism = death

Ok, I'm a capitalist. That is, I believe that people should be allowed to start a business, earn money, and spend it how they see fit. Businesses, too, should be allowed to spend their money as they see fit, for example by offering a great sale on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. But businesses have to keep in mind the dangers of the mob. No, not the mafia, I mean a large set of humans milling around waiting for some meme to take them over, to remove their free will.

Take, for example, Nov. 28 of this year. Take, for example, Wal-Mart. Consider, for example, that they always offer low prices, and Nov. 28 they undoubtedly had a bunch of extra specially low prices and great deals. Hence the mob of over 2000 gathering, even before the doors opened at the extra early hour of 5 in the blessed a.m. This mob is waiting and waiting, it's cold, they're getting impatient. They start chanting, which can be a good thing, but not in this case: "push the doors in," they say.

The workers, sensing impending nuttiness, form a human chain to slow the mob down. Then the mob starts pushing. Someone apparently removes the hinges of the doors, others smash and crash. Then the flood....

And poor 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour became a victim of capitalism, a martyr to low prices. Trampled to death by the very people he awoke so early to serve. Okay, being pushed down is terrible. But if you notice you're stepping on someone, wouldn't you stop to pick them up, even if it meant you'd miss the 50% off sale on diapers? Why did money make these people stop acting human?!?!

Not that that isn't terrible, but what really gets me is the postscript in the article on this consumer craziness, is that, although the customers were told to leave after Jdimytai was killed, they felt miffed since they had waited so long. So they kept shopping.

Capitalism 1, humanity 0.

Context-insensitive ads

AdSense has a lot of cool aspects to it, such as openness to even the smallest blog and some amount of customizability. AdSense ads are context-sensitive, based on what Google knows about the page, and thus supposed to be relevant to the consumer visiting the page. However, context sensitivity is not enough to ensure the ads are appropriate.
Any completely automated system just follow rules. Consider the following ill-advised or just plain wrong ad placements:

• Tummy flattening ads for a site on pregnancy
• Snake ads on a Monty Python site
• Gun sales on a site about the ten-most-wanted criminal watch
• Similarly, babysitting services on a site about child porn or pedophilia
• Coke ads on a page about plant life extinction ("Coke adds life", don't you know?)

That being said, I bet there's a lot of interesting, even appropriate, placements that the advertisers wouldn't have thought of that AdSense might. Can anybody think of some? Or have you seen a bad ad placement? Please let me know!