Dive Brief: 

• As more exchange-based ad buying occurs, brands are horrified to find their ads running along explicit or violent content they did not approve. 
• One particularly gruesome example from ForbezDVD.com had pre-roll video ads for brands like Nissan, Sherwin-Williams, Wolverine shoes, and Polaris running in front of a video of what the publisher claims is a woman in Mexico being executed. 
• Brands claim they have technologies in place to stop this from happening, but with so many middlemen, it's hard to predict where ads will end up. 

Dive Insight: 

This troubling example is just a drop in the bucket to how often this type of thing happens, even though brands claim they can prevent it. If digital ad sellers really want to compete with television and other mediums, they have to figure out a way to prevent this type of scenario from happening. Brands aren't completely innocent here either as they could be more carefully controlling what ad inventory they buy—or, at the very least, monitoring where their ads pop up.