Radar Online Ad Sales Manager Rockelle Grenee asked that the ad be removed after we alerted her to it. “We currently use Ad Networks,” Grenee told us. “We don’t know the ad will be appearing or what it will be about until it runs … it’s by no means something that we went out and bought on our own.”
Other sites, like GaySocialites.com and Queerty.com have seen anti-gay ads or ads for Christian dating sites appear on their sites by the same process. In most cases, it’s the ad can be removed at the request of the site. The “Yes on 8” campaign is more insidious however, because the ads are geo-targeted and appear only to visitors from California where the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 is on the ballot. Publishers based outside of California in places like New York, where Towleroad, Queerty and Radar are located are often unaware that the ad is even running.
Andy Towle says he’s had a hard time blocking the ads which have been appearing on his and other LGBT sites. “They’ve been targeting our site on the west coast for obvious reasons, so, being in NY, I haven’t actually seen the ads appear on the site but my biz partner Michael has. He was working on blocking them over the weekend, with not a lot of success.”
Oddly, ProtectMarriage.com hasn’t bothered to tailor their message to the gays — one imagines threats of lesbian bed death, the inability to have sex with other men, or the prospect of Old Navy clad in-laws ruining your candelight beach ceremony in Montauk might be better ways to sway the gay vote.
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Fauxmosexual Anti Gay Ad Sneaks Onto Gay Sites (Gawker.com)
Lesbian bed death? I’ll have to Google that one.