Control of internet ads

[Miss Chicken]

i am sure many people here are aware of the fake news site National Report. I find myself having to tell less savvy Facebook friends that they should ignore any story from this site.

The National Report has reached a new low with the story titled

"17 Texas Kindergarteners Contract Ebola After Exposure to Liberian Foreign Exchange Student" which is of course totally bullshit but has been shared several thousand times on Facebook

The story is accompanied by photos of adults who the NR say are parents of the children when in fact the photos are of families of the 19 firefighters who died in a massive wildfire.

I looked at the article's page and I saw an ad from a company I do business with. What I want to know is how much control do companies have over where their internet ads are placed? Is it worthwhile contacting the company about the ad being on this article's page?

 

[Melakon]

They probably don't have much control at all, if they're going to through an ad placement service like Google. But it probably wouldn't hurt to let the company know how you feel about it, to see what their reaction is.

Things are a lot different than 30-odd years ago, when I would send advertising copy paste-ups to newspapers individually when we had a film playing in town.

 

[Amaris]

Very little control. Most companies pay an adserver, like Google, to distribute their ads. At that point it's up to Google.

 

[Timby]

I looked at the article's page and I saw an ad from a company I do business with. What I want to know is how much control do companies have over where their internet ads are placed? Is it worthwhile contacting the company about the ad being on this article's page?

Very little unless there's a direct company-to-company relationship (if, for example, Company A goes to Company B and says, "I wish to place display ads on your website for a month"). The vast majority of ads that you see online, however, are programmatic in nature and targeted to you based on behavioral and database conditions. You likely saw this particular ad because you have done business with that company in the past.