Breitbart is bleeding advertisers [View all]

[HAB911]

Since the 2016 presidential election, more than 1,400 companies — and counting — have yanked their advertising from the right-wing website Breitbart News, where President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was formerly the editor-in-chief.

The ad removals are the result of consumer backlash spearheaded by the Sleeping Giants, an anonymous collective of progressive activists who organize their protests on social media. The group has been urging people to blitz corporations with wake-up calls about the message the corporations are sending when they advertise on Breitbart, which is known for incendiary content that is frequently unsourced, false, and/or deliberately distorted.

The Sleeping Giants claims to be “an organization dedicated to stopping racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and anti-Semitic news sites by stopping their ad dollars.” And its campaign has been working: The movement recently made headlines after the global ad network Omnicom confirmed the existence of an internal memo advising staff to pull ads from Breitbart on its clients’ behalf.

So far, the 1,400-plus advertisers that have withdrawn their ads from the site, typically through third-party ad networks, include such brands as Nordstrom, Zappos, Lululemon, and Etsy, as well as international corporations including Allstate, Mercedes-Benz, Hewlett-Packard, and BP.

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/8/14700772/breitbart-advertiser-backlash-sleeping-giants