Advertisers seek more control after unintended Breitbart spots

[HAB911]

Some advertisers are working overtime to scrub their spots from websites including Breitbart News, an unintended consequence of the automated ad buying systems that are meant to lower costs and allow for more targeted advertising.

Those trying to keep their ads off certain websites are finding they must take steps to verify the spots they bid for are where ads actually appear and that there are no third parties involved that can result in ads winding up in unintended places.

Breitbart News, once run by U.S. President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon and popular with the alt-right, a loose grouping characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics that includes neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, has become a particular concern for some advertisers and the automated exchanges they work with.

While the exact number of advertisers that have blacklisted Breitbart is unknown, Sleeping Giants, an anonymous group campaigning on Twitter against companies advertising on the website, puts the number higher than 1,500.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-advertisers-breitbart-blacklist-idUSKBN16S0D7

[HAB911]

1. Advertisers are often left flying blind in ad exchanges

Ad exchanges promised to let marketers buy online advertising more transparently, yet much of the inventory flowing through them is still completely anonymous.

Most publishers remain wary of the effects programmatic selling could have on their other sales channels, so they refuse to attach their brands to the impressions they tip into exchanges. As a result, a huge portion of exchange-traded ad inventory is a complete mystery, and marketers that buy blind still have little idea where their ads will actually be served.

Take Google’s display ad network, for example. A glance at its display planner tool reveals that some of its biggest inventory sources are undisclosed to buyers. The planner acts as a menu from which prospective buyers can piece together media buys, and it details the volume of impressions typically made available by specific publishers. Google Mail, eBay, Weather.com and Answers.com currently top the list, for example, offering over 1.5 billion impressions for sale on a CPM basis each week.

http://digiday.com/media/advertisers-are-often-left-flying-blind-in-ad-exchanges/

[HAB911]

2. Google Tries to Stop Ads From Appearing Next to Hate Speech

Google moved on Tuesday to protect its lucrative advertising business by giving marketers greater control over where their ads appear online, after major clients withdrew spots that were shown next to hate speech and other offensive material.

Google has become a global advertising behemoth, pocketing billions of dollars every year from brands promoting their goods through the company’s search engine and on YouTube. But the changes, which will be introduced in the coming weeks, highlight the difficult balance between protecting Google’s advertising business while also allowing free speech.

By giving brands more say over where their ads appear, experts say, Google is acknowledging that it has not done enough so far to police the material on its sites.

“Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize,” Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/technology/google-advertising-apologizes-ad.html?emc=edit_nn_20170322&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=68937550&te=1