Ad tech company AppNexus has barred conservative news site Breitbart from using its app tools. AppNexus said the website promotes “hate speech.” (Bloomberg). Elsewhere, brands running ads on Breitbart through retargeting and programmatic are responding to complaints from opponents of the President-Elect (Digiday)
Democrat PAC Democratic Coalition Against Trump created an app that “identifies” Trump-supporting brands, in order to make it easier to protest his presidency (Adweek). There 250 companies on the list, many of which have incredibly tenuous links to President-Elect Trump, in the form of executives publicly supporting him.
12/05/16
The WSJ tackles the issue with Breitbart, including the complexity of blacklisting sites in the era of personalization
The situation at Breitbart is bringing into sharp focus the complications of ad technology and the risks for marketers. Using sophisticated online ad-buying technologies, many advertisers now pay to place ads in front of specific users as they move around the web, as opposed to placing ads on specific websites.
11/30/16
Bloomberg reported that Kellogg’s has pulled advertising from Breitbart, citing the site does not align with its values.
“We regularly work with our media-buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren’t aligned with our values as a company,” said Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg, which also makes Frosted Flakes and Special K cereal. “We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove our ads from that site.”
Digiday has a list of other advertisers who have pulled ads from the site or taken steps to remove it from consideration for programatic opportunities.
11/23/16
Nordstrom has decided to keep selling Ivanka Trump merchandise, citing that there are equally vocal constituents that threaten to boycott the company no matter what they do (keep selling or remove from store). Spokesperson said:
Ultimately, Nordstrom went on, “Every single brand we offer is evaluated on their results—if people don’t buy it, we won’t sell it.” And since the Ivanka Trump brand, he wrote, “has grown to be a sizable and successful business,” Nordstrom has concluded that it’s not worth jettisoning, even if some of its customers feel passionately that it should. (Fortune)
