By Sahil Patel
Unilever PLC said it would resume advertising on Facebook Inc.
in the U.S. after withdrawing over the summer amid calls for brands
to protest the company's handling of hate speech and misinformation
on its platforms.
Civil-rights groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the
NAACP asked marketers to pull ad spending from Facebook for July in
a campaign they dubbed "Stop Hate for Profit," saying the
social-media giant hadn't made enough progress battling hate speech
and misinformation on its platforms.
They sought changes at Facebook including the appointment of a
civil-rights expert at the upper echelons of the company and
providing refunds to advertisers whose ads appeared next to
objectionable content. Some advertisers also wanted more control
over where their ads appeared in Facebook's news feed, seeking to
avoid objectionable content and posts by users.
More than 1,100 advertisers joined the campaign.
Unilever, the owner of household brands such as Dove soap and
Hellmann's mayonnaise, said it did not formally sign on, but it
withdrew its spending at the same time nonetheless. It also went a
step further than the civil-rights groups had asked by halting its
U.S. advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Inc. through
the remainder of the year, citing issues with hate speech and
divisive content on the social-media platforms.
Some boycott participants, including VF Corp.'s North Face,
Heineken NV and Pernod Ricard SA, returned to Facebook after July,
while others extended their boycotts, calling Facebook's moves up
to the point insufficient.
Coca-Cola Co., which halted all social-media advertising in July
but did not formally join the "Stop Hate for Profit" campaign,
returned to Facebook and Instagram on Oct. 15, according to a
company spokeswoman. It had previously resumed advertising on
YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Verizon Communications Inc., which suspended advertising on
Facebook and Instagram in the summer, has not returned, a
spokeswoman said.
Unilever said Thursday that it felt Facebook has made enough
progress for it to feel comfortable resuming advertising with the
company.
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have committed to better
management of harmful content on their platforms, agreeing to
common definitions for 11 harmful content areas, consistent
reporting on the prevalence of such content on their platforms and
independent auditing, Unilever said in a statement.
Facebook's steps were in line with recommendations from
ad-industry trade group Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of
which Unilever and Coca-Cola are members, the companies said.
"We are encouraged by the commitments the platforms are making
to build healthier environments for consumers, brands and society
in alignment with the principles of the Global Alliance for
Responsible Media," said Luis Di Como, executive vice president of
global media for Unilever, in a statement. "This is why we plan to
end our social media investment pause in the U.S. in January. We
will continue to reassess our position as necessary."
The company declined to comment further.
Facebook said it is developing controls to help advertisers
manage what type of content their ads appear next to and is testing
potential solutions internally.
"We are grateful for Unilever's leadership in building a safer,
more transparent digital ecosystem," said Carolyn Everson, vice
president of Global Business Group at Facebook, in a statement. "We
look forward to our continued partnership in 2021 and remain
committed to our work with the Global Alliance for Responsible
Media to fight harmful content online."
For many companies, pulling ads off Facebook is a difficult
proposition because they have come to rely on the social-media
giant's ad tools and data to efficiently target customers and drive
outcomes such as visiting websites or ultimately making
purchases.
Those that did boycott didn't appear to make much of a dent in
Facebook's ad business during the second quarter, when it had more
than 9 million active advertisers, according to Facebook Chief
Executive Mark Zuckerberg on the company's quarterly earnings call
at the end of July.
Facebook said at the time that revenue in the first three weeks
of July increased at roughly the same 10% year-over-year rate as it
did in the second quarter. It cited the boycott among the factors
contributing to its performance in the third quarter, along with
economic uncertainty related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Facebook's third-quarter revenue grew 22% year-over-year to $21.2
billion.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation
League, said Unilever and other large and small advertisers who
pulled ads from Facebook helped push the social-media giant to
begin to address the problem of hate speech on its platforms.
"I don't believe that the company would have taken action to
remove white supremacist content, eject militia groups, take down
Holocaust denialism, and other steps if not for our campaign," he
said. "We deeply appreciate Unilever's commitment to holding
Facebook accountable."
But Facebook has not done enough to address the root of the
problem, Mr. Greenblatt added.
"The public needs more transparency on whether Facebook's
changes actually deal with hate speech rather than issuing cosmetic
reports that don't speak at all to the efficacy of its activities,"
Mr. Greenblatt said. "And so ADL and Stop Hate for Profit will
continue to press the company to do better -- and we look forward
to working with Unilever and other businesses to enlist their help
in this effort."
Write to Sahil Patel at sahil.patel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 17, 2020 17:59 ET (22:59 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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