Kellogg withdraws ads from Breitbart News

Kellogg Co is withdrawing ads on the website Breitbart News, the right-wing news organisation for its racist and anti-Semitic views.

Steve Bannon, former chairman Breitbart News has been named a top adviser to president-elect Donald Trump.

Recent weeks had seen activists launch a campaign against brands that advertise on Breitbart over alleged espousal of racist and anti-Semitic views. 

''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,'' said Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg, which also makes Frosted Flakes and Special K cereal. ''We recently reviewed the list of sites where our ads can be placed and decided to discontinue advertising on Breitbart.com. We are working to remove our ads from that site.''

Kellogg decided to ''blacklist'' Breitbart from the websites where its products appear after being contacted by customers who saw ads for Frosted Flakes and Frosted Mini Wheats, according to Charles.

AppNexus Inc, one of the biggest digital advertising services, barred Breitbart from using its ad-serving tools earlier this month as it felt the publisher violated its hate-speech rules.

Breitbart had been condemned for allgedely featuring racist, sexist and anti-Semitic content.

Pharmaceutical maker Novo Nordisk, online glasses retailer Warby Parker and the San Diego Zoo are among those that that had publicly stated on Twitter that they would no longer advertise on the site.

Bannon ran Breitbart before he became the top strategist on Trump's campaign last summer.

In a statement to AP, Breitbart said Kellogg's move was an act of ''economic censorship of mainstream conservative political discourse'' and is ''as un-American as it gets.'' 

Other brands that had also pulled ads from Breitbart include Allstate, Nest, EarthLink, Warby Parker and SoFi according to Digiday.