Ad and subtract: SMUD pulls ads from fake-news and hate sites

At lunch on August 14, Kimberly Michelle checked Breitbart.com, curious to see how the “alt-right” hate-news site covered the Charlottesville terror attack. She was surprised to see an advertisement featuring a woman beside her car, touting the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District’s free electric vehicle charging.

Outraged to see the publicly owned power company advertising on a site known for attacking women, immigrants, Jews, the transgender community—the list goes on—the 37-year-old education consultant and blogger did what she’s done since the election: She tweeted, tagging SMUD directly.

Her tweet was part of a nationwide political effort. Since last fall, Michelle had been following Sleeping Giants, a social media activist group whose boycott campaign has reportedly resulted in thousands of companies pulling their ads from Breitbart.

Sleeping Giants, a group of anonymous digital media professionals and activists, launched its Twitter campaign last November by inviting people to do two things: “Go to Breitbart and take a screenshot of an ad next to some of their content. Tweet the screenshot to the company with a polite, nonoffensive note.”

Sleeping Giants, a group of of anonymous digital media professionals and activists, launched its Twitter campaign last November by inviting people to do two things: “Go to Breitbart and take a screenshot of an ad next to some of their content. Tweet the screenshot to the company with a polite, nonoffensive note.”

Michelle tweeted: “@SMUDUpdates um … Your ads are showing up on hateful @BreitbartNews. That’s a mistake, right? @sacbee_news @SacNewsReview @slpng_giants”

In an interview, Michelle said she was surprised because SMUD is generally sensitive about its reputation. “Public utilities are public, especially SMUD,” she said. Their public face is one of “an inclusive, diverse, wonderful provider for all the residents of the city.”

So how could the agency appear on Breitbart? “Ad revenue supports these sites,” she said. “Given our political climate, I couldn’t believe it.”

Only 35 minutes after the tweet, SMUD’s corporate communications specialist, Sarah Sciandri, was monitoring mentions on social media, and shared Michelle’s tweet with her marketing colleagues. She asked whether SMUD monitored the placement of its ads.

Following a back-and-forth among her colleagues, SMUD added the hate-news site to its blacklist of 350-plus others excluded from Google’s ad network. The blacklist included sites like OpenSecrets.org, WikiLeaks.org and the now-defunct SouthernAvenger.com and MightyRighty.com. It even blacklisted FoxNews.com, which it has since removed.

When contacted by SN&R, SMUD replied with the following note: “Due to the nature of digital advertising, despite our efforts we occasionally learn of ads that we have purchased through online advertising networks that show up on sites such as the one your reader mentioned.”

After a Public Records Act request, SMUD clarified its practices and sent the blacklist and emails that followed Michelle’s tweet.

According to SMUD, its blacklist applied only to ads purchased through Google, and the ad on Breitbart was distributed via Facebook’s Audience Network, which gathers users’ data to place relevant ads on the sites they frequent. Such “programmatic” advertising dominates the online landscape today, as companies buy ads targeting users based on location, interest and other parameters, without even knowing what sites their ads appear on—or whom their dollars support.

It’s likely that Michelle was targeted for SMUD’s ad simply because she lives in the area.

SMUD spokesman Jonathon Tudor confirms that the utility buys advertising packages from Google, Facebook and Twitter. Like many ad buyers, Tudor says, he has a new responsibility: Be associated with unsuitable content, or monitor ads across thousands, if not millions, of websites.

When SMUD ads are found on sites staffers deem inappropriate, they use tools to block those sites. There is no policy about which sites are considered inappropriate, with staffers adding sites to the blacklist as they see fit.

“It’s a challenge that just about every digital advertiser in the country faces,” Tudor said.

Andrew Stoner, a Sacramento State University communications professor who teaches public relations, crisis management and social media, says he faced a similar challenge in the pre-digital era. A former press secretary for Indiana’s governor, he was charged with rolling out a health plan. He organized billboards across Indianapolis. One of the health-plan ads wound up appearing on a billboard located above a tobacco store.

“People saw and asked, were we encouraging smoking?” Stoner said. “It was a lesson learned: I needed to know exactly where our ads will be.”

He says online advertising makes this problem ubiquitous. “It’s an artifact of the era we live in,” he said.