Amazon, Google and Facebook report billions in ad revenues. Right wing websites spread hate, racism and COVID conspiracy theories.
What's the connection? Right wing groups use attention grabbing headlines and click-bait to drive web traffic to make money. Advertisers are often unaware their ad dollars are being redirected to fund websites that promote racism, violence and attacks on democracy. It's time to hold the digital advertising industry accountable for the harm they're causing.
Follow the money to understand their scheme and how to make sure your ad dollars aren't being misused.
- Groups tracking AdTech platforms and right wing misinfo websites
- What is an ad network?
- How to protect your brand?
- What is a website advertising exclusion list?
- How to tell AdTech platforms where you do not want to advertise
- Global Network on Extremism & Technology
Ad platforms make billions - Axios
- Amazon reported healthy results on top of a long pandemic-driven growth spurt.
- Apple reported its biggest quarter ever, with an 11% sales jump and revenue up in every part of the world.
- Google parent Alphabet posted better-than-expected earnings, with annual revenue topping $200 billion for the first time.
- Microsoft exceeded expectations and issued a rosy forecast as well, buoyed by strength in the PC market.
What is Ad Network?
"Ad networks acquire available inventories from a publisher and sell them to advertisers as packaged impressions. In a simple inventory selling process, think of an ad network as a mediator responsible for introducing the right impression to the right buyer. It partners up with publishers (supply-side) and advertisers (demand-side) to help them reach their ad campaign goals. Now, as the inventory exchange cycle gets complicated, the role of ad networks starts varying. For publishers, ad networks sometimes directly sell inventory, and at other times, buy inventory from SSPs or ad exchanges and sell it for a greater profit." - Ad Pushup
Resources
Check My Ads is an independent watchdog reshaping the digital adtech industry from within its ranks — and building a new sustainable standard in digital advertising. It holds the surveillance adtech industry accountable for abuses against advertisers and consumers, and spearheading the development of a transparent, efficient and privacy-focused digital advertising marketplace."
Right Wing Watch is a project of People For the American Way (PFAW) dedicated to monitoring and exposing the activities and rhetoric of right-wing activists and organizations in order to expose their extreme agenda.
The Righting is a media company that aggregates articles and writing from various right-wing media outlets. The company, which launched in 2017, has a website, a free daily e-newsletter and a social media presence. TheRighting also researches traffic to conservative websites and publishes its findings each month in an exclusive report. The purpose of The Righting is to help inform middle-of-the-road and liberal audiences about stories and viewpoints not on their radar screens that are shaping political opinion across a wide swath of America.
Protect your brand
Advertisers should exclude their ads from running on a specific website is to do with how it affects their brand image. Be careful about what your company is associated through your ads. If your ad was to show up on an article or forum post that was racist, sexist or homophobic, then that wouldn’t be good news for your brand. Users could also think that by advertising on a website that promotes hate and racism, you also support those views.
Make sure your ads display only where you want them to by excluding websites you do not want to be associated with. Tell Google AdSense that your ads should not appear on websites on your exclusion list. Get a free list of websites to consider excluding here. Subscribe to a service like Double Verify or Oracle Moat that checks the suitability of websites where your ads will be shown.
Global Network on Extremism and Hate
"The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) is an academic research initiative backed by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an independent but industry-funded initiative for better understanding, and counteracting, terrorist use of technology. GNET is convened and led by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), a globally renowned academic research centre based within the Department of War Studies at King’s College London."