I know that money drives the world – and I know that we need money to pay for our web hosts and our programmers and such – but I’ve been pointed to two terrible examples of advertising in the wrong places. The first is PDFs – yep – now PDFs can have ads!

All Publishers have to do is to upload the PDF files to an Adobe/Yahoo portal where it is “ad-enabled” allowing dynamically generated contextual ads to be displayed whenever the PDF is viewed. The service is currently in beta and it’s free! It is limited now to text, pay-per-click ads, but I am sure it will be expanded to include graphics and rich media.

I know that publisher could put ads on their PDFs before – but this just seems different and yukky – but even worse is this example!

This is pretty appalling: Not content with exposing kids to junk food on television and on every street corner, McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) has apparently decided that it needs to reach out to kids on their report card envelopes.

An Orlando parent was upset when her 9-year-old daughter brought home her report card. But it wasn’t Ds and “acts obnoxious in class” comments that annoyed this mom: the envelope the child brought home displayed a nice advertisement for McDonald’s — the chain whose food can have such a bad impact on health that it inspired a hit documentary.

Found via Dan who found it on BloggingStocks.

Technorati Tags: advertising

Related posts:

1. PPT = All Wrong?
2. The Changing Nature of the Catalog
3. Internet Usage
4. Another Book Sale Finder
5. Reporting Spam Blogs?