ColemanMedia Report

Twenty-six year-old tattoo artist Ramon Ramirez was injured by a “laser-targeted” display ad late Monday evening while surfing the “kind of played out but still useful” music video site Pitchfork.com.  The ad, served by behavioral targeting network ExactoClick, reportedly shot actual laser beams from the Duarte resident’s computer screen, burning the skin on his neck and causing damage to his heather gray cardigan.  The news took media planners from the agency responsible for the media buy by surprise.  “When our rep from ExactoClick said they used ‘laser targeting,’ we thought it was just a really cheesy name for behavioral targeting” said Sarah Shag, a planner on the team.  “We had no idea they would shoot actual lasers and cause harm to people.  Honestly, we were just trying to target users who had searched for Indie music and high fashion sneakers.  We had no idea cookieing people could be this dangerous.”

A complaint lodged by Western Regional VP of Sales Vince Chillini Monday afternoon accused junior media planner Judy Wittenmeier of comparing “apples to oranges” when justifying her selection of rival behavioral ad network SpyBot over CookieCutter Networks, according witnesses at the scene.  ”You can’t possibly make a comparison between SpyBot and CookieCutter,” Chillini said in an email to Wittenmeier.  ”CookieCutter uses a proprietary formula of complex algorithms and automatic back-end optimization that’s so advanced, I don’t even know how it works.  And as far as I can tell, neither does our ad operations team.  But it’s clearly outlined on slide 26 of my PowerPoint, so it has to be true.”  Wittenmeier wasn’t available for comment, but a planner on Wittenmeier’s team, who asked to remain anonymous said, “He can’t be serious, right?”