Warner Bros. takes down Disturbed ad after shooting

Posted by on August 27, 2015

After the horrific murder of two journalists in Roanoke, VA on live television, Warner Bros. has pulled pre-roll ads on YouTube for Disturbed’s latest album, Immortalized. The ads apparently used clips from the animated music video for “The Vengeful One,” in which the main gun-wielding character enters a TV studio and shoots several zombie-like employees.

The founder of the ad agency which placed the ad explained the placement to USA Today:

“The Disturbed ad was served via retargeting. Retargeting ads are matched to previous web-browsing behavior, so only a visitor who had interacted with Disturbed websites would be eligible to see this ad. The content of the video is irrelevant in this type of advertising because we know that they are Disturbed fans. There was no use of key words or any other kind of targeting for this particular ad.”

Mike Wengren, the band’s drummer, told USA Today about the video in a recent interview:

“The Guy basically plays the hand of GodHe sees the media and the world running amok, and he comes down to save everyone. He goes down and takes out the mind-controlling media.”

Disturbed’s latest album Immortalized just came out on August 21st, along with the announcement of a North American tour in 2016.

(via BraveWords)

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