The latest problem for the flailing Gannett news organization are allegations that they distorted information to advertisers on the placement of billions of ads over a nine month period.
Ad industry researchers discovered that Gannett, which owns nine daily newspapers in New Jersey, falsified where ads were sold to buyers in a real-time digital auction who in many instances thought they were buying space in USA Today but instead had their ads served in a less visible daily newspaper.
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The discovery was reported exclusively by the Wall Street Journal.
According to ad researcher Braeden Vickers, Gannett was involved in something called ad-spoofing, where advertisers believed they were buying an ad on one news site but was instead directed to another.
“Gannett sites use header bidding to run ad auctions on different exchanges when you load a page. Scripts running in your browser make the requests that trigger those auctions, so it’s possible to inspect the requests your browser sends to see how Gannett is representing their ad inventory,” said Vickers. “In September 2021 I noticed that the domains and page URLs included in some of those requests didn’t seem to match the actual page being loaded.”
Gannet said the issue was the result of a mistake made by an employee in May 2021 and was not corrected until Vickers and the Wall Street Journal called them out on it last week.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Gannett apologized for providing advertisers with the wrong information and is now deciding whether to issue refunds.
One example cited by the researchers was an ad by Gilt, an online shopping and lifestyle website, that was attached to a story about bear cubs in Pennsylvania. The advertiser believed their ad would run adjacent to a news story about Wordle, the online game.
“If you thought you had bought ad space on USA Today, would you be ok with your ad actually displaying on Detroit Free Press?” Vickers asked. “Is ad space on an article about animal neglect in northern Michigan the same as ad space on a college football article? Not if you’re trying to reach sports fans.”
Gannett has faced other accusations of bad faith business practices this year.
Teaneck officials charged in January that The (Bergen) Record failed to publish legal notices they were paid to run, forcing the township council to repeat their process.
“We are legally obligated to give them this pricey business, and when they screw up it creates (a) legislative hold up for us and I think this is unacceptable,” Township Clerk Doug Ruccione wrote in an email to the township council obtained by the New Jersey Globe.
Ruccione said thirteen notices of introduction and public hearings were never published despite The Record’s assurance that they would be.
Last month, Gannett reported losing $135 million in 2021. Most Gannett-owned New Jersey newspapers, including The Record, has eliminated Saturday print newspapers beginning this week
Stock prices in Gannett have fallen from $6.92 per share in October 2021 to $4.68 per share this morning.
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