Dear MNHQ, I really would prefer not to see this advert …

[Edmontine]

How can you, in all conscience, allow this to appear on the site?

Please make it stop.

To those defending the ad maybe just for a single second pause before clicking send on a reply which tells someone who might have reason to hold a different perspective that they’re wrong.

Surely, in addition to the racist overtones, this is horribly ableist anyway. IQ is a controversial measure in any case but WTF does ‘borderline’ mean?

That is not what it is saying it is how you are reading it.

It's brown to white on my screen

Hello and thanks for reporting this ad. We're in the process of locating it and will block it ASAP.

It took a while, but they finally got rid of the vaping ads I was seeing.

Keep on (and report your thread, they might see it quicker)

In older variants of this picture, below 70 was usually labelled “imbecile” or similarly delightful term.

It’s been appearing for at least a week or ten days, @BeckyAMumsnet. Quite honestly I hesitated to raise it because at first I couldn’t believe my eyes. And then, well, no one likes to be told they’re not seeing what they’re seeing …

I don't think it's racist, just extremely thoughtless, I totally understand why it comes across as offensive. Some ad man's going to get a kick up the arse for this one.

I'm far from the only one, it would seem.

My skin colour is most like the 'genius' on the far right of this spectrum (talking strictly skin colour, not politics!), but I can still see how clearly racist and outrageous it is.

It doesn't just matter what your intention as an advertiser may or may not have been; you have to think about how it comes across too.

There was another advertiser who has just had their knuckles rapped for showing two people with 'problem' skin (who were black) and one person with 'perfect' skin, who was white.

Often, it's subconscious: not meant deliberately maliciously, but nevertheless it comes from somewhere and it gives out a strong message that white is good and black is bad.

It’s deep red to pink for me - are other people actually seeing the colour brown?

Indeed. If it's supposed to be measuring your inherent individual ability - as opposed to your mastery of a skill that you've learned/are learning - what does it actually achieve?

"You think you're thick, and we can prove that you are thick!" OR "You think you're smarter than other people and we can give you the proof you need to lord it over them!" Brilliantly helpful.

I agree this is offensive

It might be like that dress-colour controversy all over again; or the advertisers may have tweaked it slightly following complaints.

Either way, it's still clearly suggesting that the paler your skin, the more intelligent you are; and for those of with skin that's commonly called 'white', we are in reality almost always more pink than actually white, thus it looks like it's saying that "we are the smartest".

This is incredibly offensive. Lighter skinned (and further to the right) = more intelligent? Seriously?

Really glad you said that. I thought I was going off my napper.

The colours are red to me but straight away I could see what the issue was. Not a great advertising strategy.

I’m not sure it’s totally relevant, but dark red and brown aren’t that far away from each other really. So with different devices, different eyes, you’ll get different responses. To me, it looks reddish-brown.

MN should be aware of every ad they are allowing on the site - I think its a bit crap to say "well we cant vet them all" - If you are taking money for it, then you should be

Surely either a clear agreement with the ad company over acceptable advertisers or direct ad sales would avoid so many of these incidents with inappropriate content?

Just to update that we've blocked this ad but please let us know if you see anything else like it.

Many ads on Mumsnet are delivered programmatically, which means they’re served automatically via large ad networks rather than chosen by us individually. We use strict blocklists and filters to stop offensive or inappropriate content, but some advertisers try to get around those controls - for example by mislabelling their ads, changing the creative after it’s been approved, or disguising the category it falls under. That’s why, unfortunately, the occasional unwanted ad slips through on Mumsnet as it does across the internet.

When this happens, we take action straight away - we report it to our ad partners, block the ad, and update our filters to reduce the chances of it happening again.

We don't want ads like this anywhere on the site and we’re grateful when users flag them so we can remove them quickly. If you see another one, a screenshot really helps us track it down and deal with it.

Thanks, all.

Thank you @BeckyAMumsnet.

The colour hue is irrelevant - it clearly suggests paler = more intelligent. The fact that they've chosen shades of pink and brown simply makes the racist message even more obvious and blatant than it would be in another hue.

where are the racist threads - a mass report should fix that

@BeckyAMumsnet so you know that the ad networks you use send you crap ads. A quick trawl through this topic would highlight the many instances when those ads have been actively harmful to your users.

Why are you still using those ad networks? What's the business reasoning behind that?