Nissan pulls Facebook ads amid concerns about offensive content

By Isabella Shaya, Crain News Service

DETROIT (May 29, 2013) — Nissan Motor Co. has pulled advertisements from Facebook because of offensive content on the social media site.

Facebook has been facing pressure from feminist groups to ban pages that glorify violence against women, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The auto maker, along with more than a dozen smaller companies, has stopped all advertisements until Facebook can guarantee that Nissan ads will not appear on pages with offensive content, Nissan spokesman David Reuter said

On Facebook, advertisers can target certain demographics—by age and gender, for example. Ads follow the people as they browse Facebook.

Mr. Reuter said Facebook is an important part of Nissan's digital advertising and the auto maker targets a wide range of people because its vehicles appeal to all ages.

Nissan's core models—including the Altima, Pathfinder and Sentra—currently hold the most advertising weight overall for the auto maker.

"Working with Facebook, we realized that if an individual goes to a page that may have offensive content on it, our ads could follow them into those pages," Mr. Reuter said.

Pulling the ads most likely will not affect sales, he said, and he expects it to be temporary.

"I expect we will work through those specific challenges quite quickly," he said. "We haven't changed our strategy in terms of Facebook being an important part of our overall digital advertising plan."

Facebook said in a blog post that it recognized its "systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate."

Attempts by Automotive News to reach Facebook for comment on Nissan's decision were not successful today.

The activists, led by Women, Action and the Media and The Everyday Sexism Project, have sent more than 5,000 e-mails to Facebook's advertisers and 60,000 Tweets against the ads, The Times said.

This report appeared on the website of Automotive News, a Detroit-based sister publication of Tire Business.