Google's Retargeting Kicks Politician Gavin Barwell In The Behind

This is an incredibly funny story for any online marketer, it is named Gavin Barwell in 'date Arab girls' Twitter storm via The Guardian.

What happened?

In short, Conservative MP Gavin Barwell found a press release by his opposition and noticed an interesting ad on the press release for "date Arab girls." Gavin Barwell thought his opposition paid for the ad and tweeted:

I know Labour are short of cash but having an invitation to 'date Arab girls' at top of your press release?

What he didn't know was that was a Google AdSense ad and the ad shows dynamically based (1) content of the page, (2) user ad preferences and tastes and (3) sites you previously visited.

As you can imagine, after Gavin Barwell learned this he went completely silent.

James O'Flynn was similarly entertained, observing: "This did make me chuckle.

"Be careful before you question how appropriate an advert on a webpage is."

A WebmasterWorld thread has most advertisers finding this funny, except one who said:

Exactly one of the reasons retargeting should be banned.

Do you agree with that?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.