DENVER — When you think of school advertising, perhaps it's a Got Milk? poster with John Elway or Terrell Davis with a milk mustache.
Perhaps it's a READ poster, with a celebrity or notable personality encouraging kids to read.
It's probably not likely that an ad for a nicotine product comes to mind.
"I was floored. I don't know if I could have been more surprised than if I saw an advertisement for cigarettes in a school cafeteria," said Rob Witwer.
Witwer, a former state representative, was shown the nicotine ad on his son's education app called, Quizlet.
"He just said, 'Look, I just got an e-cigarette ad on my school app,'" said Witwer.
He took to Twitter to publicly question the placement of the ad in an education platform.
The product, IQOS is an e-cigarette product from Philip Morris. Altria is the parent company of Philip Morris. As a result of Witwer's complaint, Altria pulled all digital advertising while it investigates.
"We take responsible marketing seriously and have rigorous controls in place to limit IQOS ads to adult smokers 25+. We regret that this happened and we’ve suspended all IQOS digital ads as of 2 p.m. EST today. We’re working with our third-party ad placement firm to investigate how this occurred and to prevent a similar issue in the future," Altria wrote.
"I don't think the burden should fall on the school kid and the parent to keep advertising of tobacco products out of a virtual learning environment where kids in middle school could be seeing it," said Witwer.
The app also rotated through ads for a vacation site, a mattress company, a prescription drug and sports betting.
Quizlet responded to Witwer's tweet and apologized.
"We have filters in place to make sure the ads on our site are appropriate for all users. By default, we prohibit adult content, suggestive imagery, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, dating, gambling, firearms, weapons, illegal or fraudulent content, and counterfeit goods. When this does occur, we actively work with our ad partners in finding why it slipped past and work on ways of preventing it from occurring again" wrote Quizlet.
"I don't believe that this was intentional," said Witwer. "I hope whatever gap there was in the filtration process is addressed, so it doesn't happen again."
"I, actually, reached out to Altria's lobbyist, and said, 'Hey, this is a problem. Are you aware of this?'" said State Rep. Colin Larson (R-Littleton).
Larson co-sponsored the bill to raise the tobacco purchase age from 18 to 21. He also was a co-sponsor of the 2019 bill to ban vaping indoors.
"We need to be able to make sure that if we're going to allow advertising on programs that are specifically geared towards students, that if you're an Altria, if you're a Coors, or any other age-restricted product and you go to purchase advertising, that you can be assured that your advertising isn't going to appear on a Quizlet or on anything else that's specifically geared toward children," said Larson.
He said he's already considering legislation to penalize inappropriate advertising for age-specific products to ages that shouldn't be seeing it.
"It might be creating liabilities for advertising platforms for what they display," said Larson.
"We don't want to allow our kids to be marketed to for products that are dangerous to them," said Democratic Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Weiser announced in July a lawsuit against another e-cigarette maker, JUUL Labs, Inc., for advertising to kids.
"Marketing to kids a product that they are not allowed to use is an unfair trade practice, and we're pushing that forward in this case against JUUL," said Weiser.
The Quizlet platform allows users to pay a fee to opt out of advertising.
Why does an education app have ads in the first place?
"Ads allow us to make our service free for millions of people who use Quizlet each month to study. We work closely with ad providers and networks to ensure that the ads we display are appropriate for a student audience. This means blocking entire categories of ads — including, but not limited to, tobacco-related advertisements. Unfortunately, an ad that should not be shown on Quizlet was displayed due to an advertiser being miscategorized by our partners at the ad-network level. As mentioned, we have taken action to prevent any additional users from seeing the ad. While advertising allows so many students to use Quizlet for free, we also will continue to take the content of those ads seriously and ensure they’re appropriate for a student audience," Quizlet said in a statement to Next with Kyle Clark.
While the ads cycled on the Quizlet app, Witwer saw a blank ad pop up that said, "Ads by Google/Send feedback/Why this ad?"
Next asked Google how the ads are filled in the Quizlet ad space and why a nicotine ad would appear in a digital classroom.
According to Google, the app developers need to declare a target audience for their app. Apps for children also have additional requirements under the "Designated for Families" program.
"We do not allow ads promoting vaping products and any apps that are designed for kids or families must follow strict guidelines. When we find ads that violate our policies, we immediately remove them," a Google spokesperson said.
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