An online advertising “watchdog” that targeted conservative media outlets before President Donald Trump’s reelection is now losing its co-founder.
Nandani Jammi, co-founder of Check My Ads, will step down from her role as special projects leader on May 31, Jammi announced Friday on social media. Jammi’s nonprofit had long boasted about working to “defund” conservative sites over “disinformation” by pressuring the advertising industry but has backtracked on its rhetoric in recent months amid a defamation lawsuit and changing political leadership after the November elections.
Jammi said she “will be opening up a consulting shop to work with a variety of clients, ranging from tech to non-profits and movement-building” upon leaving.
Jammi and Check My Ads did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Check My Ads previously centered much of its work around a “defund the insurrectionists” project aimed at steering advertising money away from conservatives such as Glenn Beck, Charlie Kirk and Dan Bongino, with the latter now working as Trump’s FBI deputy director. Jammi and the Check My Ads team claimed such figures “incited” the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
Before Trump’s return, Jammi received sympathetic profiles from media outlets for battling “far-right” media. A 2023 article by former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz called Jammi “the woman working to stop the far-right creator money machine” and supportively referenced “disinformation” several times.
The group once described its efforts to defund Fox News, Breitbart and “insurrectionist outlets” prominently on its website, but it scrubbed these references from its front page sometime after Republicans won the November elections, the Washington Examiner reported. The front page now simply says Check My Ads is “the digital advertising watchdog” working to “protect your right to be free from scams, lies, and manipulation online.”
Check My Ads boasted in an annual report that it “educated 75 policymakers” working for “regulatory bodies,” sparked more than five “government inquiries” and “drafted 3 legislative amendments or submissions” throughout 2024. The report did not give details on the officials involved, though it said the organization “briefed” policymakers from the U.S. and multiple foreign governments “on the need for oversight of the digital ad industry.”
The pro-free speech video platform Rumble also sued Jammi and other Check My Ads employees in November 2023, alleging the nonprofit made defamatory statements accusing Rumble of lying to its investors and taking most of its funding from Google. A judge ruled in September 2024 that Rumble could move forward with obtaining discovery evidence.
The Trump administration has signaled skepticism toward so-called “disinformation” trackers and announced Wednesday it is shutting down a State Department agency that funded such efforts.
“Today, Check My Ads has become the industry’s indisputable watchdog — led by a … team that shares our commitment to broad, systemic change,” Jammi said in her post. “From here, there’s nowhere to go but up.”
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