Breitbart hosts brand ads despite blacklist requests
Companies such as Nordstrom and BMW of North America find name on notorious website
Since the presidential election, hundreds of companies have decided to block their advertisements from running on Breitbart News, the alt-right website closely tied to President Donald Trump’s administration.
But several of those brands, from the Nordstrom department store chain to small startups, have appeared on the site anyway, another example of how little control companies often have over where their ads are seen online.
Nordstrom, which said it moved to prevent its ads from running on Breitbart several months ago, was on the site as recently as two weeks ago, puzzling employees and others online, who were quick to question the company on Twitter. Other advertisers, including BMW of North America and Scribie, a transcription service, also appeared on Breitbart after blocking their ads from the site, a practice known as blacklisting.
The problem underscores the challenges companies continue to face with the largely automated nature of online advertising, which tends to show messages to people based on who they are, rather than what site they visit.
Errant appearances on unwanted sites are rare — Nordstrom runs millions of ads daily, it said, and fewer than 200 show up on Breitbart.
“This is all evidence of gaps in our supply chain, which are becoming visible to the mainstream.” ANDREW CASALE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, INDEX EXCHANGE
However, the risks of being viewed there have spiked, with consumer watchdogs and news outlets using screenshots and social media to call out brands for appearing near questionable content such as hate speech or terrorist propaganda.
Brands are frequently left scrambling to figure out how they got there.
“If a brand doesn’t want to be associated with a particular publisher for whatever reason, it’s kind of crazy that they request for it to be blacklisted and still spend money on it,” said Andrew Casale, the chief executive of Index Exchange, an online advertising exchange.
“This is all evidence of gaps in our supply chain, which are becoming visible to the mainstream.”
Those motivated to choke off Breitbart’s ad revenue have become particularly attentive to which brands appear on the site.
That effort has been led by a Twitter account called Sleeping Giants, which uses screenshots to publicize and shame brands with ads on the site.
Breitbart and fake news have become the focal points for advertiser awareness around “brand safety” domestically, said Brian Wieser, a media industry analyst at Pivotal Research. A spokesperson for Breitbart did not respond to requests to comment.
Fewer advertisers seem to be appearing on Breitbart, which may be a result of some ad networks and brand safety companies blocking it in recent months, citing hate speech violations or deeming the content too inflammatory.
Breitbart had about 1,300 advertisers on its website last month, showing about 2,600 display ads, according to data from Moat Pro, a digital ad intelligence product.
That was down from 3,300 advertisers and 11,500 display ads in November.
It’s not clear if the boycott has had a financial impact, although the top thousand domestic advertisers accounted for 73 per cent of display advertising spending last year, Kantar Media said.
Brands are finding that the me- chanics of online ads, typically placed through a complex system of agencies and third-party networks that resemble a stock exchange, can be difficult to explain to consumers.
Nordstrom, for example, responded on Twitter to complaints about its ads on Breitbart by saying, “Although we no longer advertise with Breitbart, some of our ads may appear due to the nature of how online ads work.”
Nordstrom said by email that while it had blacklisted Breitbart through the vendors it uses to buy and serve ads, it bought some ads through online exchanges that allow sites to conceal their addresses, which may account for the appearances.
Justin Oliver, who oversees digital marketing for Scribie, a startup in San Francisco, blocked Breitbart from the sites it may advertise on through Google after Sleeping Giants contacted the company in late February.
He assumed the issue was resolved, but then learned through several messages on Twitter that Scribie was still appearing on Breitbart by way of Facebook’s audience network, which places ads on sites outside Facebook.
“The next thing I know, I’m getting more of these screenshots, and more people saying, ‘You’re on a whitepride site,’ and it’s the worst thing you can see when you’re a marketing manager,” Oliver said.
He added that he had not chosen to turn on the extended option for the Facebook ads, which allowed for the ads to be placed on Breitbart, and that he shut it off after fielding complaints.