Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI), the McLean-based publisher of USA Today and dozens of other newspapers, said early Wednesday it unintentionally provided inaccurate information to advertisers for nine months, misrepresenting where digital ads were placed.
The admission was made after a Wall Street Journal article published Tuesday highlighted the issue, which it reported stemmed from advertisers buying ad space on Gannett newspaper websites through real-time digital auctions. According to the report, advertisers were buying ads they believed were going on one Gannett site — often for USA Today — when in fact they were buying space on other Gannett outlets, sometimes small weekly newspapers.
“Gannett sincerely regrets inadvertently passing along the incorrect data parameter,” Gannett said in a statement issued just after midnight. “This human error was immediately rectified when the company independently discovered the issue. The data parameter issue was caused due to a caching…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
