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posted by mrpg on Saturday January 26 2019, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the money-first dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Advertisers seek assurances from Instagram after brand safety issue, but won’t pull ads - Digiday

The prospect of ads appearing next to posts about suicide content has made some advertisers wary of buying ads on Instagram. Facebook’s brand safety problems, are now Instagram’s problems.

Marks & Spencer, The Post Office, Dune and the British Heart Foundation were named in a report by the BBC yesterday evening (Jan. 23) that found their ads had appeared against graphic content about suicide on the social network. The investigation came after it emerged a teenager who had viewed posts on suicide on Instagram had taken her own life.

But rather than pull ads like they did in 2017 when the brand safety issue spilled over into the mainstream, advertisers are taking a different approach now. None of the advertisers mentioned in the report have pulled spend, according to separate statements from the businesses. The idea that online platforms monetize inappropriate content has become such a recurrence over the last two years, that the panic that previously engulfed these issues has been replaced with pragmatism.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @07:49PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @07:49PM (#792413)

    If you want to advertise on a website that accepts user-generated content, you must accept that your advertisements might appear next to something objectionable. But it seems that once they finally discover that people can post Bad Things, they freak out and demand that the websites censor the evil content. Advertisers are absolutely toxic in every way imaginable.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @07:56PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @07:56PM (#792416)

    Instagram has a moral duty to its advertisers to condition users against posting objectionable content.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @09:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @09:16PM (#792442)

    I'm all for the implosion of the Internet "advertising industry".