October Facebook Ad Boycott Update

The #StopHateForProfit boycott officially ended July 31, 2020, but it seems to have informally extended in our communities. I’ve covered how publishers have responded for months now (here, here, here, here, and here for the main posts). Now that we’re in October, I thought I’d  check on where things stand.

The vast majority of the 56 publishers I’ve been tracking have remained off Facebook’s ad platform. The first three that used it again — Harvard Business Review Press, MIT Press, and ProQuest — continue to use it, although more sporadically now, it appears. The University of Toronto Press has ended its stated boycott, while Emerald, IEEE Xplore, and Frontiers have dabbled in the past month.

Harvard Business Review (which is not the Press, per se, but with ads covering products created by the Press) is running a very robust set of ads (Facebook estimates ~1,400 ads, up from the ~120 they were running in August and the ~1,100 they were running in September).

Here’s the update. As before, only those running ads are highlighted.

Stated Boycott Participants

• American Academy of Family Physicians
• Annual Reviews

Harvard Business Review Press — multiple ads started August 11, 2020

• Research Square
• University of California Press

University of Toronto Press — multiple ads started October 2, 2020

Likely Boycott Participants, Still No Ads

• Academy of Management
• AIP Publishing
• American Academy of Neurology
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• American Anthropological Association

American Association for the Advancement of Science — active ads from August 18-September 10, 2020; new ads active since September 28, 2020

• American Association for Cancer Research
• American Chemical Society
• American College of Cardiology
• American College of Chest Physicians
• American College of Physicians
• American Dental Association
• American Gastroenterological Association
• American Geophysical Union
• American Mathematical Society
• American Meterological Society
• American Physiological Society
• American Psychological Association
• American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• American Society for Nutrition
• American Society of Civil Engineers
• American Society of Clinical Oncology
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• American Urological Association
• American Veterinary Medical Association
• American Water Works Association
• Biophysical Society
• BMJ
• Cambridge University Press
• Canadian Science Publishing
• Cell Press
• De Gruyter
• EBSCO
• Electrochemical Society
• Elsevier

Emerald Publishing — two ads run between September 17-24, 2020

• Endocrine Society

Frontiers — one ad run September 15-16, 2020

• GeoScienceWorld
• Harvard University Press
• Health Affairs
• IEEE

IEEE Xplore — one ad run October 2-4, 2020

• ICE Publishing
• IOP Publishing
• IOS Press
• JAMA
• JBJS
• JMIR Publications
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• Karger Publishers
• Mary Ann Liebert
• McGraw-Hill

MIT Press — active ads started running August 12, 2020

• Modern Language Association
• NEJM and NEJM Knowledge+
• Oxford University Press
• PNAS
• Princeton University Press
• Project MUSE

ProQuest — multiple ads running between July 14-August 10, 2020; a single ad running September 2-5, 2020; and, a single ad running September 11-12, 2020

• Purdue University Press
• Rockefeller University Press
• RSNA
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• SAGE Publishing
• Society for Neuroscience
• Springer Nature
• SSRN
• Taylor & Francis
• Thieme
• University of Chicago Press
• University of Michigan Press
• Wiley
• Wolters Kluwer
• Yale University Press

I’ll keep updating this story occasionally, as it keeps taking unexpected turns.

Thanks for reading.

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