Dive Brief:

Thanks to a Reddit post gone viral, it appears as if GamerGate's attack on Gawker —and its advertisers— is entering a second stage.

is entering a second stage. The post was by user HistoryOfGamerHatred who claimed to have worked at ad tech firm Rubcion. The post left a tutorial on the ad tech firms Gawker employs, and instructed fellow Redditors to convince those firms to stop working with the publisher.

The post points out that Gawker uses both Criteo and Datalogix, which would be a violation of both company's policies. Another user writes that Gawker is also potentially in violation of Google's terms of service in regards to nude images.

Dive Insight:

It isn't clear if the approach has yielded the results the gamers are looking for. Gawker, Criteo, and Google have all declined to comment up to this point. Though even if a brand publicly denounces the stance Gawker has taken on the situation, because of programmatic ad buying, the company could still in turn accidently pay the publisher per eyeball or click. No matter what Google or the ad tech firms decide to do, one thing is for certain: The gamers who are a part of GamerGate do not take to being teased lightly.