Every day someone in the Stop Funding Hate team goes through the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express, makes a note of the main advertisers, and tweets them. This is really useful for letting the world know who’s advertising that day, but it’s not the full picture.
So in July 2017 we commissioned some expert research from Ethical Consumer, to try and get a better picture of who’s advertising and when. It was a two-week pilot project (17 to 30 July), paid for using money raised by the thousands of people who contributed to our Crowdfunding campaign. If all of us as consumers and citizens are going to be able to change the minds of the companies we love, we’re going to need accurate information on where they’re advertising, so we’re hoping to continue the research. But in the meantime, here are the headlines:
Top Ten Advertisers in the Daily Mail
Imagine Cruising
Sky
ROL Cruise
Fred Olson Cruise Lines
Dyson
Aldi
Future You Health
Gtech
Fidelity International
Tesco
Also in the top 30 are: the Co-op, BT, EE, Specsavers, Marks and Spencer and Boots.
Top Ten Advertisers in the Daily Express
The Health Lottery (it has to be noted that this is owned by the same company, Northern and Shell)
Imagine Cruising
Newmarket Holidays
ROL Cruise
Gtech
Future You Health
Aldi
LV Insurance
Tesco
Co-op
Also in the top 30 are: Specsavers, Plusnet, BT, Sky and Go Compare.
Top Ten Advertisers in the Sun
Sky (again, the commercial ties should be noted here)
Morrisons
BT
Lionsgate
Lidl
Tesco
Ford
Aldi
Virgin Media
TalkSport
Also in the top 30 are: the Co-op, Specsavers, Plusnet, Three, Jeans for Genes and Sainsbury’s.
Obviously some names come up over and over, so here are the top ten overall:
Sky
Imagine Cruising
The Health Lottery
BT
Lidl
Tesco
Morrisons
ROL Cruise
Aldi
Lionsgate
And, if you take out Sky and The Health Lottery due to their commercial links with the newspapers, the top five overall within this sample are: Imagine Cruising, BT, Lidl, Tesco and Morrisons.
What’s next?
Now that we’ve done the pilot research, we’d love to carry on and track every advertiser in the Mail, Sun and Express. We’ll then be able to publish all the information on our website and make it even easier for everyone to ask the companies they love to stop funding hate. To do this, we need more funding. If you’d like to help make this happen, please donate today. In the meantime, if you have any questions about a brand, please just get in touch – email info@stopfundinghate.org.uk.
Action you can take now
Recently, Stop Funding Hate has been focusing on mobile phone providers. Nearly every one of us has a phone, and nearly all major UK providers advertise in the Mail, Sun or Express. As you can see from this research, BT, Sky, Plusnet and EE are some of the biggest spenders. Mobile phones can connect us in so many ways, but right now our bills are being used to fund hate that divides us. Please let your provider know that it’s time they #StartSpreadingLove and #StopFundingHate.
A note on research methods
It’s impossible to know the exact amount that each company spends on advertising in the Mail, Sun and Express as many do deals and get discounts. But, using publicly available rate cards, we can see the relative price of each kind of advert. This means that as well as tracking which companies advertise the most often, we can see whether they’re buying the most expensive kinds of ads, e.g. full page colour spreads. The more research we do, the better we’ll get at tracking and categorising the information.