A note on our advertising

You may have recently noticed some changes to the advertising on Feministing, which is part of our work to more effectively monetize the site. We are still getting used to the new system and set up and as a result, some offensive ads have been getting through recently. Sorry for that and thanks to those that have pointed them out and sent emails–we appreciate that you respect our space so much.

That said, since we are truly trying to become a sustainable entity, there is a certain extent to which we will take cash from companies we don’t love (and might even critique on the site). There’s a difference between the written content on Feministing and our advertising – something we are confident, you as readers, are fluent and savvy enough to recognize. Furthermore, with the extensive work of media literacy we have done at Feministing for the last 8 years, we hope to provide tools for you, as media consumers, to effectively screen all the messages you receive from the media. Yes, we have high expectations from you too, but it’s only because we know you are awesome and smart.

However, there are certain companies we don’t want money from at all–no matter how much it feels like we might be “gaming” them. We draw the line at anti-choice ads and offensive weight loss ads (if an ad was actually health focused, we might look at it differently, but weight loss ads always seem to be as offensive and unhealthy as possible). These advertisers are tricky – they’re targeting our site because we do write about those issues. And they’re constantly generating new click thru urls, so when we get rid of an ad a new one pops up. Please note this is not intentional on our part and something we are working to fix.

That’s where you come in. We need your help to keep the site free of anti-choice and body shaming messages. If you see an offensive ad on the site please send us a screencap and, most importantly, the click thru url (you can mouse over the ad, right click, and copy the url). We need the screencap so we can confirm that the ad is offensive. With the url we can better keep that particular ad out of our rotation.

Thanks for your support!