When editors lay out newspapers and magazines, they try to avoid placing advertisements next to incompatible news stories. For example, a magazine will try not to place a product advertisement facing a story on the dangers of that product.
This evening I was watching a show on the History Channel about Chin Shi Huang Ti, the first emperor of China. The show included a dramatization of the emperor’s last days, including a dialogue between him and his physician, in which the emperor insisted on drinking a potion prepared by the physician that might offer the emperor immortality. The narrator explained that, from the description of the emperor’s symptoms, we know now that he was suffering from acute mercury poisoning. At that point the show cut to an automobile commercial — for this brand. Oops!