Not Buying It: Breitbart Losing Advertisers

It turns out advertisers aren't buying Breitbart's far-right vision of the world.

The site saw about a 90 percent decline in the number of brands advertising there from March to May, Digiday reports. "There were just 26 brands appearing on Breitbart in May, down from a high of 242 in March, according to MediaRadar, which tracks ads on websites," Digiday notes. Other right-wing sites have seen declines as well, but not as pronounced.

Advertisers are steering clear of Breitbart because of traffic declines and calls for boycotts, Digiday reports. Numbers from comScore indicate the site drew 10.8 million unique users in April, down 13 percent from a year ago. Many news sites, however, saw peak use right after Donald Trump's inauguration as president and experienced declines since then.

In the first few months of this year, Breitbart's advertiser base changed from a diverse group "to mostly targeted, conservative brands that were buying programmatically," Digiday reports.

"What this means is that it's now only able to get demand via Google Ad Exchange and Taboola, and it's filled with classic direct-response advertising bought on a performance basis whose buyers don't care about the same things brands do," Jonathan Mendez, CEO of Yieldbot, told Digiday. Yieldbot, like Google, enables advertisers to make targeted ad buys based on keywords.

Also, several companies ceased advertising on Breitbart last year. The latest decline may indicate that Breitbart's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim views and support of Trump have become even less popular. Also, the site, once run by Steve Bannon (now a key Trump adviser), has been involved in some controversies regarding personnel. Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, who has a history of racially charged and anti-transgender comments, had to resign after a video surfaced of him saying positive things about sexual relationships between teens and adults. And writer Katie McHugh has left the site after sending out an inflammatory tweet over the weekend, claiming the U.K. wouldn't experience terrorist attacks if there were no Muslims in the country.