While errant appearances on unwanted sites may be rare — Nordstrom runs millions of ads daily, it said,
and fewer than 200 show up on Breitbart — 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 like hate speech or terrorist propaganda.
“This is all evidence of gaps in our supply chain, which are becoming visible to the mainstream.”
AT&T and Johnson & Johnson were among prominent advertisers
that pulled their marketing from YouTube and Google ad exchanges on Wednesday after news reports showed their ads running next to offensive material.
Perversely, because so much online advertising follows people wherever they go on the web, the attention on Breitbart and, separately, more extreme sites has increased
their traffic, making the problem even bigger, said Joe Barone, managing partner of digital ad operations for GroupM, the media buying arm of the ad giant WPP.
“Our teams are looking into how we might address this situation.”
Ben Winkler, the chief investment officer at the agency OMD, said other brands
that showed up on Breitbart in spite of blacklists probably had several parties handling their digital ad spending, including local marketing affiliates, publishers and public relations agencies.
