Do You Know These Sites?

I am still thinking about the recent closure of GARM after the lawsuit of Elon Musk and X, which means we have removed an advertising oversight entity. And I am digging into the recent Adalytics report that finds even with verification partners, major advertisers' ads are appearing in unexpected places.

I always enjoy investigating where major advertisers' ads are appearing across different platforms, publishers and media. I find it fascinating to see what kinds of content the ad dollars are supporting and what people are encountering on the internet.

Before discussing the top three sites that you may not have realized you were advertising on, I want to emphasize that my approach to media planning and buying is based on the belief that you can't effectively advertise for a client without thoroughly understanding the publishers, context, and audience. Just as it's crucial to know the community and surroundings in which you live, it's equally important to understand the advertising environment, the content and the audience experience.

If you are going to steward money, it's important to carefully consider the website and the publisher, especially when there are lots of misleading advertisements and low-quality content trying to take advantage of the client. It's important to appreciate high-quality media and publishers. Canadian media is a great place to advertise, especially for lifestyle and news content.

Here are three sites, you probably never have clicked on, but you may have ads on:

Chess.com - This seems like a perfectly safe media environment with a respectable domain (I wish I bought it back in the day). Advertising served to me has been from TD, Mazda, The Institute for Internal Auditors, Fizz Mobile, Church's Chicken, Kitco, and Adobe. It pushed traffic to a few different retailers, never the brands listed that I can see. It has a low bounce rate and a long time on site. This is a great ad environment, right? Fun fact, all the traffic from the site goes to other chess sites, gaming and gambling properties. Ads for this site are sold on Amazon, Google, Criteo and RTB House, this is a Polish DSP.

Fandom.com - As a nerd, who loves Marvel, Witcher and well all movies, games and such. I knew of this site because it is optimized for every SEO query I have and because the ads on it seem always out of context with my need to solve a chapter of a video game. This was the site that was the focus of the Adalytics report. I've been bombarded with various ads on this site. I've seen ads for Toyota, Mazda, Amazon's Blink low-cost security camera, and multiple ads for Burts Bees products (I didn't know I could add to cart a lip balm right now). While browsing The Boys Wiki, I was shown an ad for a good GIC rate from Oaken Financial and VRBO. The site is linked to Fandom, which was co-founded by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia and Angela Starling. It is built on the same technology as Wiki and has over 200 million visitors, making it one of the top 50 websites globally. Lots of Traffic and eyeballs going into niche corners of this property.

Hotdeals.com - I landed here as I tracked a major retailer in Canada that had a few ads on this site and I was curious about the ranking of traffic, the environment and the experience. The first thing I noticed is this site has some of the best copy - "96% of our customers?are statisfiled: Be Next." I am not sure I want to be statisfiled anytime soon, but okay! They have some great fine print around Amazon affiliate marketing (they get a commission for clicks), and they are also part of the eBay Partner Marketing Network. All their traffic comes from affiliate sites like AWin. In truth, Hotdeals is owned by China-based LinkGains.

There is nothing wrong with advertising on any of these three sites, none of these are porn (maybe a bit in some of those Fandom groups) or MFA (per se). My advice is to check the domains where your ads are running, just like we used to go on walking tours to see OOH placements in a neighbourhood, or to assess the context of a 30-second TV spot and the content it's in. We often discuss exclusion lists, but it's also important to know what's on the inclusion lists, especially if you want your brand to be associated with great content, publishers and audiences (and yes, those Canadian publishers).