Fairfax Media's flagship website The Sydney Morning Herald has again been the victim of unfortunate ad placements.
Littered among a story about the upcoming Melbourne Cup and the amount of horses that have died were scores of ads about betting.
The piece was published across the Fairfax network on Saturday with the headline: “Melbourne Cup 2015: The deadly moment a nation has forgotten” with the subject matter being around the number of horses that have died over the past year.
The Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses told Fairfax that since last year's Melbourne Cup fatalities at least 115 horses have died on Australian racetracks.
In what's deemed an insensitive ad positioning, among and embedded in the story were a host of horse racing ads for the likes of betting sites Ladbrokes and Wizard of Odds, as well as an embedded form guide for this year's race.
Fairfax Media declined to comment on this particular ad placement, however when asked previously about a similar ad placement a Fairfax spokesperson said: “Fairfax Media is constantly looking at solutions to stay ahead of what has become a growing issue and putting controls in place.
“The increase in programmatic advertising has created a more complex environment, and publishers need to be part of the solution to provide brand safe environments, which is a key rationale for our joint venture partnership in APEX Advertising, the premium mobile programmatic exchange.”
The publisher has put together a series around the race that stops the nation, with the other stories covering the race featuring similar ads. With Sportsbet also having taken out a full-page take over of the Sydney Morning Herald for the race day.
James Diamond, managing director Australia and New Zealand for Integral Ad Science told AdNews that there is technology available to block ads on certain content and hopefully the Australian market will adopt it further as the market matures.
“There certain key words I think agencies should be putting against these campaign so they aren't targeting on this type of content,” he said.
"Across our client base a lot are still in the monitoring phase, they are reporting on this stuff and not yet ready to take action and start blocking, but if you look at the US or the UK where they’ve had more time to test and trial this technology, blocking is much more common.”
This isn't the first time The Sydney Morning Herald has experienced a less than ideal ad placement, with the publication previously placing an ad for retailer Myer for Fathers Day above an image of a father grieving his dead sons.
The publication has also previously run a homepage take-over for the NSW Government aiming to promote the beauty of Sydney during winter, in the midst of some of the states worst storms.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.