Good for Verizon, Netbank and Sallie Mae for cancelling their advertising at Adbrite when their ads appeared on queen troll Ann Coulter. The good looking blonde with a bigger mouth than an unhinged boa constrictor is clearly reaching for attention by referring to Democratic presidential 2008 candidate John Edwards as a “faggot.” Rather than focus on Coulter’s intolerance, or the pitiful fact that she stood up for the Republican Mark Foley who resigned after allegations of inappropriate instant messages with male pages, this brings up a major downside of using ad brokerage services like Adbrite: control.

“Per our policy, the networked Web site ad purchases are supposed to be stripped of certain kinds of Web sites,” said a Verizon spokesperson. “This one could be considered an extreme political Web site, should be off the list, and now it is off the list.”

The same could be said for advertising in programs like Google Adwords. You hope through filtering that you can avoid having your ads show up on certain types of sites but it’s not an exact science. Also, who has time to go around and list all of the sites you don’t want to appear on?