News brands offer premium and brand-safe environments for advertisers — but keyword blocklists means they are blocking ads around news
Speaking at Newsworks’ ‘Back don’t block’ webinar yesterday (Tuesday), Adam Foley, CEO of Bountiful Cow, called on advertisers to rethink their blocklists.
“Brand safety on quality news sites is poorly thought out, totally unnecessary and utterly ruinous,” he said.
Foley explained that brand safety technology protects advertisers from the worst of the internet but also penalises quality content such as journalism.
Karen Eccles, chief commercial officer at The Telegraph, agreed with Foley, saying “keyword blocking is just not fit for purpose”. She told delegates that blanket blocklists are applied to news articles and “impede publishers from sufficiently monetising inventory”. This has a negative impact both on funding quality journalism and preventing advertisers from accessing quality content and audiences.
Recent Stagwell and HarrisX research on “The Future of News” shows that there is no discernible difference in brand reputation scores for ads placed next to what are considered ‘brand-unsafe’ news stories (war, politics and crime) compared with ads placed next to ‘brand-safe’ stories (business, entertainment and sports).
Speaking this week, Jack Miles, senior director at HarrisX, said: “So many marketers are, or claim to be, ‘data driven’. They should let the data drive their decision when it comes to investing in news. The data says unequivocally from umpteen sources: ‘News advertising is good. Do it!’”
Foley echoed this view, adding: “It’s not rocket science. If you put your brand in front of millions of people in a quality environment that people care about, it’s going to get noticed, be remembered and get acted upon.”
“I believe strongly that we should all support news brands from across the political spectrum to boost and support media neutrality and prolong effective channels for advertisers,” he concluded.
Read more about our “Back don’t block” research to understand why consumers are dismayed with ad blocking and fake news here.
You can download the key stats and quotes from the webinar, or watch the full 30-minute recording now:
