I think it’s relevant to every single ad tech company that buys inventory at scale that’s very, very targeted at low costs.”
To be sure, publishers are limited in how much they can extricate themselves from technology companies — even as
The Guardian pulled its ads, it still used Google’s AdX ad exchange to select advertisements on its own website.
“We knew the next day that our brand, which is fundamentally important to us, was
about to be splashed over the Times front page for all the wrong reasons.”
For premium publishers such as The Guardian, which, like
and other news organizations, faces looming job cuts tied to economic pressures, it is a chance to highlight how disconnected online ads have become from the context in which they appear.
Publishers Retreat From the Risks of Google-YouTube Advertising -
When The Guardian was made aware this month that some of its advertisements were appearing
on YouTube videos from extremists, it quickly pulled its marketing across Google.
There was irony in The Guardian’s having to pull the ads, given
that attracting more paid subscribers is a way for it to mitigate the fact that many companies do not need to pay to directly advertise on its news site, Hamish Nicklin, the chief revenue officer of Guardian News & Media, said in an interview on Friday.