Gannett provided inaccurate information to advertisers for nine months: report

Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, acknowledged this week it had given bad data to advertisers over a nine-month period last year. 

“Gannett sincerely regrets inadvertently passing along the incorrect data parameter. This human error was immediately rectified when the Company independently discovered the issue,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday. 

The statement comes following the publication of a report in The Wall Street Journal a day earlier alleging the company misled advertisers and misrepresented where on their websites billions of ads had been placed.

In some cases, the Journal reported, advertisers thought they were buying an ad on one Gannett site but actually purchased space on another.

Gannett owns newspapers in several local news markets including The Detroit Free Press and Tennessean. It also owns and operates USA Today. Content throughout the USA Today network is frequently shared in the company’s local markets and vice versa. 

The company said the incorrect information was given to advertisers “due to a caching error when the company implemented changes to how data is passed from the publisher to the ad exchanges.” 

“It is important to note that the revenue associated with third-party programmatic advertising exchanges that potentially used the incorrect data parameter in question was less than $10 million in total over the impacted period,” the company said. “Also, none of Gannett’s direct sold digital advertising or direct sold programmatic advertising were affected.”