The term “irony” is thrown around a lot these days, almost exclusively wrongly, often referring to a style of dress that the wearer means to sartorially mock; see, especially, trucker hats, mustaches, one-liner pun t-shirts, and/or a stated affinity for 80s prog rock.

Meanwhile the perfect illustration of irony is happening more and more often compliments of Google Ads’ contextual placement technology. For example, a recent Radar Magazine piece on the most misogynistic movies of the decade, titled “No More Fat Chicks,” concluded (for me anyway) with a page advertising something called the unbelievabra.com which will allow women to “say goodbye to bra bulge and muffin top.” This is no new phenomenon of course as has been documented well in the past. Gawker has a whole collection of ironic Adventures in Contextual Advertising.

So the question is what does one do about a situation like this where the contextual ads are being served in a manner not only useless to the advertiser but possibly actually potentially harmful to both the advertiser and the ad hosting site?