Florida Family Association has stopped another attempt to pioneer main stream advertising support for internet porn sites.  America’s moral environment cannot afford to have the internet porn industry move from a subscriber based medium to hosting all of their smut online for free.  It is bad enough online as it is without an even larger flood of internet smut being hosted free via advertising dollars. 

Florida Family Association’s efforts continue to be successful in preventing millions of porn images on the internet from being financially supported by advertising dollars from mainstream Corporate America.   Florida Family Association reported in September 2008 and October 2008 that FFA’s efforts had headed off an attempt to pioneer main stream advertising support for internet porn sites.

Thanks to a tip from a concerned citizen in August 2008 and Florida Family Association’s customized software, called PornCrawler, used to search links on web sites Florida Family Association was able to identify numerous mainstream companies with advertisements that appeared on hundreds of linked porn web sites. 

These hundreds of sites are all linked to one central html which is hosted in Bütschwil, Switzerland according to Networksolutions.com.   Alexa Traffic Software reports that this porn company’s web pages get millions of hits every week.

Florida Family Association has deployed the PornCrawler search software the first week of every calendar quarter since 2008 to determine if mainstream company ads were again being posted on porn web sites.  The October 10, 2012 search found the following companies' advertisements were posted on thousands of pages of this porn company’s web site:  AT&T, Blizzard Entertainment, Chili’s, General Motors, Network Solutions, Nordstrom, Shriner’s Hospitals, State Farm, Target, Toyota, Toys R Us, Transunion, Ulta and Verizon.

Good News:  Florida Family Association’s communications with the above named companies resulted in the removal of all their ads form the porn sites. 

Florida Family Association first contacted the advertising vendor responsible for allowing mainstream companies’ advertisements to appear on the sites.  The company appeared responsive to Florida Family Association’s concerns by replying on several occasions.  However, despite the advertising vendor’s communications stating that they were blocking ads from appearing on the porn site, that did not occur until Florida Family Association contacted the advertisers.

General Motors Corporation responded with:

From: "tom e henderson" tom.e.henderson@gm.com
To: "david caton" davidcaton@floridafamily.org
Cc: "trina barta" trina.barta@gm.com
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 5:27:01 PM
Subject: Resolution - inappropriate websites

Dear Mr. Caton,

I wanted to let you know that we identified the reason why our ads appeared in these websites, have taken immediate action to have them removed and have implemented additional safeguards to help ensure this does not happen again in the future. We would never intentionally place advertisements on any websites of this nature, and were very disappointed to learn of this situation. Again, thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

Sincerely, 
Tom.
Tom Henderson
GM Communications Staff

Toyota responded with:

From: "Ask Toyota" toyota_cares@toyota.com
To: "david caton" davidcaton@floridafamily.org
Sent: Friday, November 9, 2012 6:27:26 PM
Subject: Re: Is the Toyota, Lexus actually advertising on p*** web sites? [Incident: 121109-000207]

Mr. Caton,

Thank you for contacting Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

Your email to our executive offices has been reviewed and forwarded to our Customer Experience Center for response.

We apologize for the appearance of Toyota and Lexus ads on the websites mentioned in your email and thank you for bringing the matter to our attention.

The situation has been researched and we have learned that the ads were placed through an ad network that was not using the appropriate filters to block appearance of Toyota ads on these types of sites. We also have confirmed that they were not national ads, but ads placed with this network at the regional level. The region has been alerted and has rectified the situation.

Again, please accept our apologies for any disappointment caused and our sincere thanks for taking the time and trouble to contact us.

Toyota Customer Experience
 Customer Via Email (Entered by Jay Spencer)    11/09/2012 03:27 PM

Nordstrom responded with:

From: "Luke Doyle" Luke.Doyle@nordstrom.com
To: "david.caton@comcast.net" davidcaton@floridafamily.org
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 6:20:10 PM
Subject: RE: Is the Nordstrom actually advertising on p*** web sites?

David,

I understand you emailed Blake Nordstrom and Mike Koppel. After speaking with both of them they asked that I reach out to you. I manage our online marketing team.  As you noted, we do run some of our advertisements via ad networks with Google, MSN, AOL but we have very strict guidelines around the type of sites/content where our Nordstrom ads can run. Pornography sites are not allowed. 

I am familiar with the campaign you forwarded to us. We are nearly certain that our ads did not run on the site indicated, or any other pornography website. However, to fully ensure that there wasn't a glitch that could have allowed this or that it won't happen in the future, we have a small team that is focused on this.    

Thank you again for your interest/concern. We take these issues very seriously, just as you do.

Regards,

Luke Doyle
Nordstrom Marketing

Unfortunately, internet advertising vendor(s) continue to push their agenda of trying to profit from mainstream advertising dollars that financially support porn web sites that are free to the internet user.  Just like companies who claim their advertising buyers should not have placed their advertisements on certain television shows, FFA is finding the same problem with internet media buyers allowing mainstream company ads to appear unauthorized on porn sites.

In 2008, Florida Family Association notified the following companies whose products appeared on these web sites:  Alltel, AmbienCR (Sanofi-Aventis U.S. LLC), Band-Aid (Johnson & Johnson), Revlon, Pop Tart (Kelloggs), Bridgestone, Macy's, Oreo (Kraft Foods), Howard Johnson's (Wynhdam Worldwide), Super 8 Motel (Wynhdam Worldwide), Ramada (Wynhdam Worldwide), Wingate (Wynhdam World-Most wide), Days Inn (Wynhdam Worldwide), Sprint (Sprint-Nextel), Betty Crocker (General Mills), Capital One, Verizon Wirelss, Olive Garden (Darden Restaurants) and Swiffer WetJet (Procter & Gamble.) Ads for all of these companies stopped appearing on the subject sites after Verizon led the charge with the advertising vendors.

Had Florida Family Association not taken action the advertising vendor responsible for placing the mainstream company ads on porn sites could have attempted to sell this concept to Corporate America on the merit that no one complained. 

America’s moral environment cannot afford to have the internet porn industry move from a subscriber based medium to hosting all of their smut online for free.   Florida Family Association will continue to monitor this situation every calendar quarter and contact all mainstream advertisers if appropriate.