Saatchi chief says Facebook has hit a ‘watershed’ moment for advertising
The news that Nissan and Nationwide Building Society are cancelled their advertising on Facebook has been described as a “watershed” by the head of digital at M&C Saatchi, Christian Purser.
Facebook has pledged to resolve the issues
Facebook has moved swiftly to upgrade its advertising policies after a series of well publicised incidents in which adverts were placed adjacent to content that the companies did not consider suitable or appropriate.
The site’s algorithms place adverts for sponsored products based on calculations based on prior page visits.
In one instance, beauty brand Dove found its sponsored content placed next to Facebook material that was considered misogynistic. Nissan and Nationwide ads were placed next to images that Facebook users reported as offensive, and which were widely circulated.
“[Facebook] do have to take responsibility for content if they are to continue growing their advertising," Purser said.
Dove said it was working with Facebook to resolve the issue and to “refine our targeting terms in case any further pages like these are created". Nationwide is also working with Facebook to resolve the issues.
“We will increase the accountability of the creators of content that does not qualify as actionable hate speech but is cruel or insensitive by insisting that the authors stand behind the content they create,” a statement from Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, Marne Levine said