Some Brands Pause Facebook Campaigns; Ad Industry Tries To Scuttle CCPA Amendment

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To Facebook, Or Not To Facebook?

Facebook has lost some advertisers since CEO Mark Zuckerberg refused to remove posts by President Trump that glorify violence. Agencies including Pearmill and Verasoni Worldwide are advising clients to suspend campaigns while protests continue, The New York Times reports. Hundreds of companies hit pause on Blackout Tuesday, including major brands. Nike and Anheuser-Busch cut budgets by more than $100,000 in early June, according to Pathmatics. The web browser Braze pulled a $60,000 Facebook campaign planned for this summer. And Basecamp, a business software company, stopped advertising on Google and Facebook. But don’t expect the holdouts to last. “It’s hard,” said Lutchi Gayot, a small business owner. “Facebook ads are keeping small businesses alive. If you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist.”

Special Opts

Ad industry trade groups are trying to scuttle a proposed amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act that would require companies to honor data opt-out requests made by users in regards to browsers, plug-ins and device IDs, even if those requests didn’t apply to a specific company. All browsers now offer data privacy and ad-blocking features by default, often giving people an option when they download the browser or app what kinds of data sharing they’ll allow. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra says those decisions “communicate or signal the consumer’s choice to opt out of the sale of their personal information.” The ad industry orgs are pushing for the current standards to hold, with people opting out of data collection company-by-company, instead of via the browser or device settings, MediaPost reports.

Changing Horses Midstream

Hulu’s programming and ad sales teams have been partially absorbed by Disney’s streaming operation, and “Hulugans,” as employees call themselves, are bristling at the loss of independence, The Information reports. The fiercest holdouts come from Hulu’s engineering team, which doesn’t relish being subsumed by Disney’s streaming tech division (formerly BAMTech, a 2017 Disney acquisition). One potential compromise is for Hulu to continue serving its own ads through separate technology, while the BAMTech group hosts the video streams. Hulu is also not the first streaming service to be corporatised by new telco owners (cough … HBO … cough). But scaling Hulu in the United States and internationally is critical to Disney’s streaming revenue plans, so an integration will happen soon.

But Wait, There’s More!