
For advertisers, algorithms can lead to unexpected exposure on sites spewing hate – The Washington Post
As the owner of a small business in liberal Massachusetts, John Ellis was a natural sympathizer of the nationwide call for advertisers to boycott Breitbart News, with its hard-edge conservative politics and close ties to President Trump. But it made Ellis wonder about other, more extreme right-wing sites: Who is placing ads on them?A few clicks around the Internet revealed a troubling answer: He was.On a website owned by white nationalist leader Rochard Spencer, Ellis saw an ad for his engineering company, Optics for Hire, pop up on the screen even though he had never knowingly bought the ad.
What Ellis had stumbled on was a little-known facet of the booming world of Internet advertising. Businesses using the latest in online advertising technology offered by Google, Yahoo and major competitors are also increasingly finding their ads placed alongside politically extreme and derogatory content.
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