Nood, an American bra brand known for its adhesive bras, nipple covers, and boob tape, is spearheading a campaign to shed light on the adverse impact of advertising policies enforced by Google, Facebook, and TikTok.
In the past year, Nood claims that its business has been negatively impacted by having their products and ads categorized as sexual in nature, indecent, or inappropriate, which has resulted in censorship, shadow bans, and removal of their advertisements. A few examples include:
- Google classified Nood's content as sexual because its images showed the “lower or outer curve of the female breast,” which the brand uses to showcase its nipple covers. Google says this falls under “partial nudity.”
- TikTok banned Nood from its landing page and ads due to artwork featuring breasts, which led to broader restrictions on any products associated with breasts.
- Meta took down some of the company's ads, which Nood says has resulted in “substantial financial losses and hindered growth.” Nood says that Meta's policy doesn’t separate nudity from sexuality. An image with Nood’s nipple covers shown on a woman was censored, while the same product demonstrated on a male body was approved.
Astrid Montalta, CEO and founder of Nood, wrote in a statement:
“As female founders, we already have the odds stacked against us. Less than 3 percent of venture capital funding goes to female-founded companies, and less than 10 percent of female-founded businesses are able to grow revenue over 100,000 US dollars. Facebook, Google, and TikTok all claim to support the empowerment of women; however, by automatically sexualising a woman's body, they discriminate against and penalize female founders who create products for women, only compounding an already dire statistic for success.”
This one's tough to judge.
On one hand, I understand where Nood is coming from. Just because their products are made for women's breasts doesn't intrinsically make their products sexual in nature.
On the other hand, some of Nood's ads are objectively sexualized, designed to make the viewer think at first glance that the woman is topless, only to look closer and discover that she's wearing a skin tone nipple cover. Many users wouldn't consider this type of content appropriate for their feeds, and platforms have a responsibility to their users (and other advertisers) to only show content that adheres to their community guidelines.
Where are Meta, TikTok, and Google supposed to draw the line?
I understand Nood's struggle, but nipple covers and adhesive bras aren't the only industries that run into content policies on advertising platforms when demonstrating their products. Should a company that sells penile sheaths be able to showcase their products on male genitalia in their Facebook Ads since the product is medical and not sexual in nature?
Plus, other companies like Boomba and Victoria Secret seem to advertise their similar products without much fanfare. From the few examples of ads that I saw, it feels to me that Nood may have been pushing the envelope with their ads in regards to these platform's guidelines and got upset when Meta, TikTok, and Google determined that they crossed the line.
Nood could certainly get creative and find ways to advertise their products that fit within the community guidelines of the platforms they advertise on instead of playing the victim card.
However I'm making these judgements just based off images from their website and ad examples I saw in the Facebook Ad Library. It's very possible that some of Nood's less revealing ads have been unjustly censored by these platforms. And anyone who's advertised before knows that appealing platforms' decisions is all but impossible.
What are your thoughts? Hit reply and let me know or join the convo on LinkedIn.