Major Firms Pull Ads From Facebook

In a bid to protect their brands, six major firms have pulled their advertisements from Facebook.

First Direct, The Halifax, the AA, The Prudential, Vodaphone and Virgin Media have all expressed major concern over their ads positioning on the social networking site, after being alerted to the fact that ads were appearing on a rota basis on a BNP (British National Party) related page.

A spokes woman for Vodaphone said “Our public policy principles state that we do not make political donations or support particular part political interests.” Vodaphone do however want to continue its partnership with Facebook but will have to renegotiate their terms, in order to do so, if they want to stay true to its policies.

There has been a recent rush by many firms to place adverts on social networking sites, such as Facebook, in order to take advantage of the massive audiences they attract. This news will no doubt slow down the current saturation of some advertisers in this domain.

Many businesses will now be contacting their advertising agencies to see if stricter control can be enforced on where adverts are actually placed. As this case has shown, often there is little or no control over where adverts are actually placed on Facebook’s multimillion page network.

The BNP’s party spokesman Phil Edwards thinks that there is no reason for these major companies to pull their ads as there is “nothing wrong with the BNP”. Facebook themselves have failed to comment on the situation.

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