In this file photo, Rebel Media co-founder Ezra Levant arrives at the Law Society of Alberta in Calgary, Alta., Wednesday, March 2, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

It’s been nearly a year since anonymous, anti-alt-right group Sleeping Giants began calling on Canadian companies to stop placing digital ads with conservative website Rebel Media — and the campaign says it has succeeded in getting more than 600 companies to do so.

A public spreadsheet, the social media group said it last updated Feb. 19, 2018, names 626 companies who have agreed to blacklist The Rebel — more than double what the numbers were in mid-August. The majority are Canadian and American advertisers, with some from the U.K., Sweden and Germany. They include car manufacturers, telecommunications companies, banks and a variety of major retailers.

Sleeping Giants calls itself “an organization dedicated to stopping racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and anti-Semitic news sites” by choking their cash flow from online advertising. It remains unclear, however, what kind of impact the offensive against Rebel has tangibly had — beyond bad publicity.

Rebel co-founder and self-described “rebel commander” Ezra Levant has maintained throughout that Sleeping Giants’ naming-and-shaming tactics won’t have their intended effect because online ads aren’t a “significant source of money” for the business. Asked Thursday whether the company’s revenues have dropped with hundreds of companies redirecting their ads, Levant reiterated that what he sees as a “PR stunt” is not hurting The Rebel.

“None of the groups they harass have a contract with us,” Levant said in an email. “There are limitless other advertisers for our Google ads.”

While it has a Facebook presence, Sleeping Giants uses Twitter as its main vehicle to tag companies whose digital ads appear on far-right sites and requests they block those webpages from their ad buys.

Many affiliated accounts now exist around the world, but the original American Sleeping Giants account launched first in late 2016 and has been laser-focused on cutting off ad dollars from the ultra right-wing website Breitbart.com, known for its ties to racist groups. That account claims 3,755 companies have joined their advertising boycott campaign against Breitbart.

Breitbart notably had ties to ex-Trump administration strategist Steve Bannon until recently. He stepped down as the site’s executive chairman earlier this year.

Sleeping Giants’ Canadian Twitter account, active since February 2017 and run by anonymous operatives, announced last May it would target The Rebel, which also has a history of posting inflammatory content, stating the outlet is “VERY similar to Breitbart.”

In a previous statement to iPolitics, Levant disputed the characterization of his website as intolerant, saying The Rebel is a “diverse” media company that employs people of different genders, ethnicities and religions.

Levant at the time called Sleeping Giants a “hate group,” alleging it is “bullying” Canadian companies and “specializes in targeting conservative Jews” — referring to himself and Breitbart’s two co-founders, Andrew Breitbart and Larry Solov. On Thursday, he reiterated he considers the group to be “anti-Semitic.”

Meanwhile, Sleeping Giants has repeatedly rejected any claim that they are coercing the companies they tag in their tweets. In previous private exchanges with iPolitics, the group has said they understand the largely automated nature of ad buying means many companies aren’t aware of where their ads end up — and they want to make advertisers aware they can get third-party ad servers to opt out of certain placements.

YouTube ‘cutting off’ Rebel Media’s ads and traffic, Levant says

While he doesn’t appear to have spent a lot of air time fighting the Sleeping Giants campaign, Levant has appealed to his followers for donations to help make up for advertising dollars The Rebel has supposedly lost in another way: YouTube.

In several videos posted on the Rebel Media YouTube channel, the conservative media personality complained his business fell victim to changes YouTube made to its advertising rules, which included more strict criteria for users looking to monetize their content.

The streaming platform made the updates following a ‘YouTube ad boycott,’ where big-name advertisers pulled their ads when they realized they were appearing against videos that contained offensive or extremist content. Now, for a YouTube channel to host ads and share the bounty, that channel has to hit 4,000 hours of viewing time by 1,000 unique subscribers in the last 12-month period.

Because of this, The Rebel’s ads and traffic are being “cut off,” Levant claims. In his note Thursday, he described YouTube’s decision as a move to “demonetize conservative websites.” As of today, the Rebel Media channel had 902,774 subscribers.

Similarly to his argument for online ads, Levant also asserts he didn’t build his company’s business on YouTube revenues.

“YouTube was a valuable revenue source for us for about six months; before that, we were too small; after that, their censorship policy kicked in,” he wrote Thursday, emphasizing the website’s “bread and butter” is crowdfunding and subscriptions for paywalled content.

“It was a nice bonus for six months, but it’s not how we built our business.”

Despite that, Levant still brings up the money he says he no longer gets from the streaming giant in his fundraising pitches.

“Can you help us financially too? By helping us to replace the ad money that YouTube has removed from us?” He asks in a video posted earlier this week.

Overall, Levant has insisted the Rebel Media operation is growing. In another video, posted to mark the website’s third anniversary on February 16 this year, he said 2018 will be the site’s “best year yet.” He said the website will “expand” its coverage of the “Conservative campaigns to take back Alberta and Ontario,” ahead of those respective provincial elections.

Levant also plugged an app The Rebel is building, which will be independent from their website host, NationBuilder, and compatible with both Android and Apple. Both versions of the app are in beta mode and are expected to be completed within the next month.