A Bad Headline, a Decent Article.

This ugh-inducing headline appeared last night on the Dispatch website:


But then a little bit of responsible reporting comes into play...

The ad - a click-on video featuring Kasich and his running mate, Mary Taylor - was placed on the Michigan militia site by Google, which is aggressively seeking to increase its share of political advertising dollars during this year's midterm elections.

The Kasich campaign, perhaps taking a page from Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown's successful playbook last year, is investing heavily in online advertising, viewing Google as an emerging tool for focusing ads on groups of voters.

Buying ads on the Google Content Network exposes campaigns to more than 1 million sites approved by the giant search engine, which Kasich says he helped take public as a former managing director of Lehman Brothers.

The Google Adwords service screens potential sites, weeding out pornographic and other unsavory sites, and then uses keywords to match campaign ads to compatible sites.

"For example, a website containing camera reviews may contain an ad for a camera," said Galen Panger, a Google spokesman.

First off, I'm not going to complain one bit about the campaign taking a page from the Scott Brown campaign handbook. That seemed to work pretty damn well.

Additionally, props to the Strickland campaign who seemingly did not go on the attack on this issue, and justly so. As the article thoroughly explains, this kinda stuff happens when you pay for an aggressive internet-based ad campaign. In the seemingly infinite internet world, it can't be helped. At least not with the technology now available.

Fortunately, this is a non-issue.