Ads: Right-Wing political promotion not welcome on Daily Kos

In contrast to our policy about commercial advertising, we do make an effort to screen out right-wing political ads before they ever appear on our site or in our emails. A basic Daily Kos Rule of the Road is that we are a site for Democrats. Please know that we find right-wing/Republican ads equally objectionable and work hard to block them.

The challenge is that a large block of our advertising is bought on an advertising exchange, in the same way that you might buy stock on a stock exchange. Without getting into the weeds, in addition to the fact that we don’t control many aspects of the exchange, sometimes buyers misrepresent who they are in order to purchase ads on our site. The appearance of a right-wing political ad means that someone slipped it through without our knowledge.

Whenever we find ads like these, we try to block them (provided we have the URL for the ad itself) and so we do appreciate readers bringing them to our attention. We will continue to do everything we can to block these ads but please know that 100% success simply isn’t possible when some actors in the ecosystem aren’t being honest.

Please keep engaging with the site and calling these ads out as you see them. The best way to alert us to them is by opening a ticket at the Help Desk to report where you saw the ad and the ad’s URL. If you can attach a screenshot of the ad, that will help a great deal.

Thank you for bringing them to our attention when you see them, and thanks as always for supporting the site’s core mission.