Complete Story
10/11/2017
Advertisers getting nervous about their marriage to Google, Facebook
Silicon Valley’s online tech giants are under pressure, and not just from Russia investigators. This time it is the people who pay the bills: the advertisers who are asking serious questions about whether their products were sold alongside covert Russian propaganda.
Just as airlines pull their ads during coverage of air crashes, advertisers have long had strict rules about the placement of their brands. But the evolution of the automated digital ad business, including that of Facebook, Twitter and Google, has led to some distasteful situations for advertisers, including the placement of hundreds of their banner ads — including those for politicians — atop jihadi videos on YouTube.
That debacle has led advertisers to be especially sensitive to what they call the issue of “brand safety,” the effort to make sure their commercials appear next to quality content.
This month, under intense scrutiny from legislators, Facebook handed to Congress 3,000 ads linked to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, admitting it had received upward of $100,000 in ad spending. The ads deliberately tried to exploit the racial and religious divisions in the United States, investigators said. Google has also found that Russians bought ads on its platforms to influence the election, The Washington Post reported Monday.
