Many pundits have framed this battle as a three-way contest involving Apple, Google, and Nokia-soft, all but writing off RIM and HP as viable players in this future battle. On the surface, it seems reasonable to do so.

Apple and Google are both already shipping popular phones and gaining significant market share. Meanwhile, Nokia—although not a leader in the smartphone OS race—still has volume; by default, it will get Windows based phones to millions of users.

This leaves us with the so-called losers: RIM and HP. Both companies are currently shipping phones, but neither has offerings with significant consumer demand. RIM holds onto market share via its lock-in with enterprises and a core group of consumers who love BlackBerry messenger. HP is barely on anyone’s radar and, with no new products till summer, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

So are the pundits right? Is this a three-horse race that RIM and HP are destined to lose?

Source: Apple Is Said to Work on Cheaper, Smaller IPhones (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-10/apple-said-to-work-on-cheaper-more-versatile-iphone-models.html) by Peter Burrows and Gregory Bensinger
Source: Nokia to rely on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7: 'This is now a three horse race' (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/nokia-to-rely-on-microsofts-windows-phone-7-this-is-now-a-three-horse-race/44725?tag=mantle_skin;content) by Larry Dignan

The convention of this particular website is to display a splash screen with an ad before the screening of any of its video clips. On this particular day, the ad displayed prior to the selected video was one for the Toyota Motor Company.

This piqued my interest, as I would have banked on there being videos on this website that a company like Toyota would not necessarily approve of or be partial to, so I decided to follow my hunch and take a look at the video I’d been sent.

Now, it should be said I don’t work for or have any personal affiliation with or insight into Toyota’s advertising strategy. But it doesn’t take a child genius to work out that Toyota would likely have a problem with one of their ads being displayed prior to a questionable video, such as the following (the title should be self-explanatory of the video’s content). 

Title: Missouri Crack Whore Tells The Truth

Having viewed this particular video clip, I must say, I find it fairly humourless, and think it actually portrays someone who is in need of sincere and genuine support. In short, I don’t really see the wit in exploiting someone in need for a few cheap laughs.

Equally, I have my suspicions that, in view of this, a company like Toyota would not want to have an association with or be seen to be endorsing such content in the particular way it is presented.

This is one of the very real dangers of internet advertising: sometimes, it’s just not clear where your ads might end up and what associations this may derive. This scenario often plays out when purchasing ads on content advertising networks.

Too often, these networks don’t tell businesses just where their ads might appear. This isn’t, however, intended to be a cautionary tale to advise readers against using these networks, but it is a stark reminder that you always need to be mindful of where your ads might end up, because sometimes they might appear where you wish they hadn’t.