Advertiser Boycott Rages On as eBay Dumps Rush Limbaugh

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Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 11:30 am

You may have forgotten about it, but Rush Limbaugh is still losing advertisers. Today, eBay announced that they are no longer advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.

The boycott has been raging on, as evidenced by eBay announcing today via Twitter that are no longer advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.

The Internet auction giant joined UPS in becoming the second national advertiser to leave Limbaugh’s program this month. The boycott has literally cost Rush Limbaugh and the radio stations that run his program millions of dollars, and the bad news is that it isn’t over yet.

Contrary to what Limbaugh wants people to believe, the national advertisers are not returning. Rush and his public relations team have tried to bury the boycott by not discussing it, but in April, Limbaugh was only able to attract 7 advertisers to replace the 170 that had departed. According to the StopRush Project, Limbaugh’s most prominent national advertisers include Lifelock, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Kia, Papa John’s, Home Depot, Angie’s List and NBC-TV.

The credit for the success that the boycott has achieved belongs to all of the dedicated people at the StopRush Project who, long after the media stopped paying attention, have continued to tweet and contact Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers. These people have not forgotten Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke and they are out there everyday reminding his advertisers that there are financial and public relations consequences to aligning their brands with Rush Limbaugh.

Advertiser boycotts have become an effective tool for progressives and liberals to deliver their message of personal accountability to right wing talkers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and also corporate accountability for their advertisers. Conservatives who complain about these tactics are most galled by the fact that the boycotters are using their beloved free market against them.

Our attention as a nation will soon turn to the Olympics and then to the Republican and Democratic conventions, but before we do that, this is a reminder that Rush Limbaugh is still in a world of hurt.

Rush Limbaugh lost his Fortune 500 advertisers and household names like AOL, Allstate, Geico, J.C. Penny, John Deere, H&R Block, Capital One, Netflix, and Sears.

Update: eBay was kind enough to contact me and provide and provide a clarification of their tweet, “We ran a limited-time ad campaign and spots were picked up on a variety of national radio shows. We are not currently advertising; this was a limited-time campaign. We do not have – nor have we ever had – any sponsored affiliation with the show.”

In the future, I hope that eBay follows the lead of 98 other corporate advertisers who have specified that their ads not be included in Rush Limbaugh’s rotation.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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