I/O
‘Adult’ Products Are a Nightmare to Advertise on Social Media
A new white paper sheds light on inconsistent, and sometimes sexist, policies on platforms like Instagram
Starting a new business is never easy, and when Heather C. Montgomery first launched PleazeMe, a social site devoted to giving women a comfortable and fun venue to talk about their sexual identities and desires, she anticipated a number of hurdles. Montgomery knew that battling our culture’s attitudes about sex would be an uphill battle. But one hurdle she wasn’t expecting? How difficult it would be just to advertise her website in the first place.
“I have been continually surprised at every turn how few of the normal resources that a regular business has that we can exercise,” says Montgomery, who has a background in health care marketing. Even an ad promoting an article explaining PleazeMe’s seven “sexual worlds” — they’re basically groups like Vega, for people interested in “extreme show and tell” — was universally banned by social media platforms. That included Twitter, which Montgomery notes is “supposedly the last, freest platform on the planet.”
As her team navigated the complex landscape of social media advertising, determining what was (and, more importantly, wasn’t) allowed…
