Retailers drop advertisements with Breitbart

By

Kate Dingwall

Published
Mar 8, 2017

The efforts of a group of anonymous activists is prompting some retailers to cutting ties with Breitbart, a right-wing news website. 

Since the November election, a group of activists who call themselves Sleeping Giants have been campaigning to stop retailers and brands from advertising on Breitbart. 

1,300 companies have since pledged to stop advertising on Breitbart, among them Nordstrom, MVMT Watches, L’Occitane, Mod Cloth, Warby Parker, The Honest Company, Henri Bendel, Lululemon, Teva, Uniqlo, and Sephora.

Sleeping Giants and its followers are currently working to get Amazon to cease its support of Breitbart through mass tweets and emails to high-ranking employees.

To encourage retailers to cut ties, Sleeping Giants are encouraging social media followers to tweet at or email Breitbart’s advertisers with a screenshot of the advert and a polite note asking the companies to remove their support of the right-wing media site. 

In fact, many retailers aren’t intentionally advertising with Breitbart – the majority of companies look to third party advertisers to purchase online advertising space. The spaces are run by robots, who place advertisements based on algorithms.

Many of the companies petitioned by Sleeping Giants weren’t actually aware they were advertising on Breitbart until Sleeping Giants had asked followers to target them. Companies can avoid advertising on websites such as Breitbart by blacklisting websites that contain certain content from its media buys. One third-party advertiser, AppNexus, has pledged to remove Breitbart entirely from any of its advertising affiliates.