From a business standpoint, the lesson to be found here (and the conservative backlash against Chik-fil-A for reversing its stance recently) is that you gain absolutely no customers, but lose a ton, by reversing your stance on politics (whatever your stance is.) You aren’t going to gain any customers from the opposing political side, but you can lose a lot from your original supporters.
I liked Michael Che’s observation
In our modern world of segmented television where every channel pretty much has their base subscribers and few others, it only makes sense to only show things that your audience wants. Also note that gays and only what 3% of the population and how many of them get fancy weddings? It just isnt a market for Hallmark to go after.
Its just business.
Did you read post 17
The point remains the same. They pulled the ad to please their audience, they got backlash, so they reinstated the ad to please their audience. It would have been better if they had said from the start, fuck you, bigots, the ad stays. I would have respected that. The way they did it, no respect.
Would you use the same justification for a different situation? Like this hypothetical?
"Our target audience is mainly white folks. So we don’t allow ads that show non-white folks. And certainly not inter-racial couples kissing. Those just aren’t markets we go after. It’s just business. "
Negative. The article was updated between post 4 and my post.
I’ll double the sentiment. 
Fancy weddings? How does that figure into this?
I’ll just say that it’s very likely that significantly more than 3% of people feel that censoring an advertiser’s ad because it features a same-sex kiss between two brides is somewhere between “cowardly” and “hateful.”
FWIW:
63% of Americans support same-sex marriage (source). Even among those age 65+, nearly half (47%) are in support of SSM.
70% of Americans support equal-rights and non-discrimination protections for LGBT people. (source)
Hallmark is backpedaling and say they will bring the ad back.
It’s fun to watch corporations squirm, now both sides can hate them. Their actions are so disingenuous and transparent.
You are aware that the ad in question is from a wedding planning company, who probably has a good handle on how many fancy weddings gay couples have.
I bet they spend more than the members of the Bigoted Moms March.
The wedding industry is ginormous; I guarantee you except for a few conservatives the industry loved gay marriage becoming legal. All those new clients! We don’t get a ton of weddings where I work (we don’t go after them as much as we do business meetings) but when we get a gay wedding they’re just as fancy as a heterosexual wedding.* Why wouldn’t they be?
*Small, casual weddings aren’t something we ever see except about once every 5 years or so; we really aren’t set up for it.
If coastal elitehood has reached Montreal, can the rest of the continent be far behind?
It’s not about appealing to 3% of viewers… it’s about not angering the ~50% (or more) of viewers who have no problem with gay marriage and find efforts to hide representations of gay marriage hateful and bigoted. Angering us is likely to hurt Hallmark’s bottom line.
Bigotry is not a political view. Being angry at seeing a commercial featuring a same sex couple is not a reaction to politics. A good sugarcoat might make bigots and otherwise fearful, hateful people feel better about themselves, but politics this ain’t.
By this logic, Hallmark’s bottom line would have benefited the most by the company having never run the ad in the first place.
Had it run nothing but heterosexual wedding ads, chances are, the LGBT community and others wouldn’t have particularly noticed or cared - people generally don’t notice the absence of something as long as it’s not particularly deliberate or publicized.
But by first running a lesbian ad, then yanking it after protests, then reinstating it after protests, Hallmark simply pissed off people from all ends of the political spectrum while winning no new business.
What the…? Why, aorta…
Someone probably would have noticed if Hallmark just happens to be turning down all the ads with LGBTQ representation. Being hateful and bigoted is (and should be!) bad for business, at least if the goal is to appeal to a wide audience.