Far-right-wing news site Breitbart has launched an attack on multinational company Kellogg's after the breakfast cereal giant pulled advertising from the conservative news website.
Earlier this week, The Kellogg Company confirmed they would be discontinuing advertising on Breitbart, saying content on the website doesn't align with Kellogg's values.
Breitbart describes themselves as providers of "right wing or far-right American news, opinion and commentary". Former executive chair Steve Bannon has been quoted linking the site to the "alt-right" - who are backed by ultra-conservative hate groups in the United States.
Mr Bannon took leave from leadership at Breitbart in order to work on US President-elect Donald Trump's election campaign, becoming campaign manager in August 2016. Mr Trump has since named Mr Bannon as a chief strategist and Senior Counselor to his Presidency.
In response to Kellogg's decision to halt advertising, Breitbart has launched a campaign "against Kellogg's bigotry", dedicating whole sections of the site's front page to coverage of stories that may harm the cereal brand. The site has also launched an online petition encouraging consumers to "pledge to boycott Kellogg's products." According to Breitbart figures, more than 200,000 people have signed the online pledge.
Writing on their website, Breitbart claimed the removal of Kellogg's advertising would have "virtually no revenue impact", but that it represents "an escalation in the war by leftist companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House."
A screengrab of Breitbart.com shows a portion of the site's #DumpKelloggs coverage.
Kellogg's joins a number of companies who have pulled advertising from Breitbart following a high-pressure social media campaign.
Twitter account Sleeping Giants calls on consumers to take screenshots of advertising on Breitbart and to tweet the image to the advertiser, along with a "polite" note. Advertising from companies including Uber, Trivago and Al Jazeera has been highlighted this way.
The software used by Breitbart means many companies may not realise their advertising is appearing on the website at all. Companies have to specifically blacklist the Breitbart in order to prevent their advertising from appearing on the site.
This appears to have been the case for Kellogg's.
"We regularly work with our media buying partners to ensure our ads do not appear on sites that aren't aligned with our values as a company," spokesperson Kris Charles said in a written statement.
"This involves reviewing websites where ads could potentially be placed using filtering technology to assess site content. As you can imagine, there is a very large volume of websites, so occasionally something is inadvertently missed. In this case, we learned from consumers that ads were placed on Breitbart.com and decided to discontinue advertising there."
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