Facebook and Digg have both jumped off the Google advertising bandwagon. IAC dumped DoubleClick (which Google is the process of trying to acquire) in favor of Microsoft’s Atlas advertising platform. With these recent high-profile advertising losses, Google has no doubt been trying to snag some equally high-profile replacements.

Go ahead and score one for Google - the search company just announced an exclusive multi-year advertising deal with world news heavyweight CNN:

CNN.com and Google announced an agreement today that enlists Google’s AdSense^TM advertising program to deliver site targeted advertising to CNN.com.

Through this collaboration, the AdSense service places contextually relevant ads alongside CNN.com content, allowing both small and large advertisers to target CNN.com specifically and connect with high quality content and traffic. Under the terms of the deal, Google will serve as the exclusive provider of auction-based text advertisements throughout CNN.com.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the mixing of algorithmically selected contextual advertising and news. To me, it just seems that risk of inappropriate advertising appearing is just too great. Seven of the fifteen “unfortunately placed” ads on a list published by Oddee back in July were contextually selected ads that just turned out to be wildly inappropriate:

• Iomega ads that said “Burn baby. Burn!” running next to a story about a toddler who died in a fire
• An ad that gets your attention by saying “Hey Genius!” running next to a story about a brain-dead woman
• Pictures of young kids showing up alongside a story about a child abuse ring

Sure… it’s easy to see how such ads could be chosen by a computer to run next to those ads. But the majority of folks reading those articles 1) don’t know that a computer picked the ad and 2) probably wouldn’t care anyway. If I was CNN I’d make sure I was keeping a close eye on AdSense… especially in relation to articles dealing with sensitive subjects.

Nevertheless, the deal is probably good news for both parties financially. With eBay’s recent pull away from Google advertising, Digg, Facebook, and IAC’s departure, and the uncertainty of Ask.com’s decision on whether or not to continue using Google for advertising, Mountain View needed a win.