02.04.2017 03:33 PM

Why is the government of Ontario advertising on a racist web site?

The pro-Trump web site, no less? This is nuts. 

5 Comments

  1. rww says:

    My guess it’s a Google or similar ad where the ads get placed on random sites and the advertiser does not choose which ones.

  2. With Google ads you don’t normally review and approve every website you appear on. I remember when the left wing website DailyKos had lots of Conservative elsction ads.

  3. Matt says:

    If you don’t clear your cookies on a regular basis, Google will use a persons browsing history to tailor ads on the sites you visit.

    That may be part of it or it may not. Anyone in the OLP you can talk to to see if it is indeed a Government of Ontario ad buy on Brietbart?

  4. Liamyoung says:

    Good catch! The other excuses are valid but their agency should be fired for letting this happen – ok maybe some harsh reprimands should be dished out. It’s actually very easy to set exclusions and other parameters with Google ads.

    Unless … Maybe they wanted to show the ad on Breitbart?

  5. Peter Mumford says:

    There are different types of digital ad networks. Some have portfolios of sites that you can review beforehand (easy but tedious work) so that you can flag the sites on which you don’t want your ads to appear. The Google Display Network is a bit different, because they’ll serve your ad to potentially any site out there that is formatted to accept GDN ads. So in that case, the advertiser has to have and maintain a list of all the sites that they don’t want their ads to appear on, and exclude them up front when setting up a GDN campaign. That said, the agency that did this one should reasonably be expected to know that Breitbart would be a controversial place for a Government of Ontario ad. I believe the federal government started excluding Breitbart from their ad network buys several months ago.

Leave a Reply to Peter Mumford Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.