| Since the days when the first banner ad ran on a website (which was WIRED in 1994, as it happens), online advertising has gotten … complicated. As Gilad Edelman writes this week on Backchannel, brands now buy ads through centralized brokers, who in turn book space online through lightning-fast, algorithm-driven auctions. Those ads end up all across the internet. Back in 2017, Nandini Janni spearheaded a campaign to protest the fact that, as a result of this process, mainstream brands from Allstate to Visa were showing up on sites like Breitbart, which promote hate speech and bigotry. So she cofounded a campaign—Sleeping Giants—to pressure marketers to pull the ads. It worked. Breitbart's ad revenues fell by 90 percent. But it also backfired. Embarrassed and wary advertisers turned to "brand safety" companies that use crude keyword blacklists to steer clear of supposedly controversial content. The result: Advertising on mainstream news sites like the Boston Globe, CBS News, and Vox (and, yes, WIRED) plummeted. Such keyword blocking has in fact dealt a body blow to media companies and online discourse writ large. Now Janni is on a mission to fix this system she inadvertently helped create, which is riddled with perverse incentives and inefficiencies. Her target once again: Giant corporate brands. As Edelman writes, "She just needs to teach them to take control of where their ads are running—and in the process, take on the $300 billion digital advertising sector with a business of her own." Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED |
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