About the Author: Nandini Jammi is a partner, organizer and original member of Sleeping Giants, a social media campaign dedicated to making bigotry less profitable. Sleeping Giants formed in the weeks after the 2016 elections, alerting brands and businesses via Facebook and Twitter that their ads were appearing alongside racist and bigoted content on Breitbart. Over 4,000 advertisers have blacklisted Breitbart since the effort began. The campaign has grown to nearly 300,000 members across Twitter and Facebook working together to hold both advertisers and platforms accountable for the rhetoric they fund, distribute and profit from. Nandini is a University of Maryland alum and works primarily with B2B software businesses as a copywriter and marketing consultant.

1. Programmatic Advertising
The ultimate grift
Nandini Jammi / Sleeping Giants
@slpng_giants

2. What is a “grift”?
Grift verb
Definition of grift
transitive verb
: to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence
game)
intransitive verb
: to acquire money or property illicitly

3. Hi, I’m Dini
● CURRENTLY: Product Messaging
Strategist & Copywriter
● PREVIOUSLY: Growth & marketing
for SaaS startups
○ Customer support
○ Product management
● Not a ton of experience with
AdWords!
Founding Organizer at
Sleeping Giants

4. What you see on Breitbart...

6. Screenshots of the ad
on Breitbart + a quick
tweet to the brand
Easy! Instant!

7. People noticed - and
wanted to join us.
(We started a list of
“confirmed”
advertisers too. Now at
4000+!)

8. Breitbart didn’t
react well.
(Thanks for the
idea validation +
free press, guys.)

9. Then it got bigger....
Thomson Reuters halts
programmatic ads in wake of
brands 'funding' terrorism
report
Jaguar Land Rover suspends UK
digital ads after 'terror funding'
claims

11. Brands Try to Blacklist Breitbart, but Ads Slip
Through Anyway
Chase Had Ads on 400,000 Sites. Then on Just
5,000. Same Results.
Extremists made £250,000 from ads for UK
brands on Google, say experts
Havas Freezes All Google And Youtube Ad
Spend In The U.K.

13. Holy. Shit. What’s going on?
1. METRICS:
Are we wasting our ad money?
1. TECH
Why doesn’t the blocking
feature work?
1. COMMUNITY STANDARDS
Why are ads even on Breitbart
in the first place?

14. 1. Are we wasting our ad money?
✅ JP Morgan Chase AdWords test
✅ Until last year, you couldn’t see
your ad placements on Facebook
✅ There’s proof Facebook is cooking
its numbers
YES

15. Over half the internet is fake
● Studies say that less than 60 percent
of web traffic is human
● A full HALF of YouTube traffic was
bots masquerading as humans (2013)
40%
bots

16. More than half of digital advertising
goes to Facebook & Google

17. Facebook fuck-ups: a non-exhaustive list
✅ Double counting views on Facebook pages
✅ Faulty average watch time
✅ Referral traffic from FB to your website
✅ Reaction breakdowns for FB Live Videos
traffic
Source: MarketingLand
...the list goes on.

18. Fake metrics = People lost their jobs
“Facebook massively & knowingly
inflated its video-view statistics, which
had the DIRECT consequence of 90% of
media orgs firing writers in favor of
expensive video producers, who also got
fired when it turned out video was
worthless”
Chris Conroy
Senior Editor DC Comics
(@dyfl)

19. 2. Why doesn’t blocking work?
✅ Google introduced page-level
exclusions (putting onus back on
advertisers and activists)
✅ Blacklist = better monetization
than whitelist for Google + FB
✅ Faulty tech/not a priority

20. 3. Why are our ads on Breitbart in the
first place?
✅ Inconsistent Community
Standards enforcement on
abuse/hate speech
✅ Leadership & politics (Joel
Kaplan, VP Global Public Policy)
✅ Scaling moderation = costly,
impossible

21. “It’s important to remember that not
disagreeable or unpopular speech violates
our Community Standards or Audience
Network policies. Publishers you may
disagree with may be allowed to continue
within the Audience Network….”
— VP Carolyn Everson’s response to Sleeping
Giants members

22. We’ve entered the Era of
Brand Safety
Protects us. Protects them.

23. What’s next?
1. Brands & advertisers have a public mandate
from consumer activist groups to pursue
brand safety.
1. Google & Facebook have less leverage and
little public trust
1. The free-for-all ad era will undergo
significant change - hopefully for the better

24. @slpng_giants
slpng_giants/
Everyone’s welcome!
Except Steve Bannon.