In this week’s edition of ‘The Campaign Podcast’, Bountiful Cow CEO Adam Foley called on advertisers to consider the effects their ad spend has on the media landscape
Speaking about the importance of news brands’ trusted environments compared to less regulated platforms, Foley was unequivocal about agencies’ responsibility to drive effectiveness for their clients: “It’s important that all aspects of the industry — but media agencies as well — ensure that trusted journalism is respected in the planning process for all its positive attributes for brands.
“There’s a lot of data, there’s a lot of research…that says you should work with these brands because it will create positive commercial effect off the back of your advertising”, he continued.
In addition, he called on the advertising industry to consider the social impacts of not investing in news: “If you don’t pay for journalism, you get propaganda. And we have to ask, as an industry, are we up to that responsibility?”
Foley also spoke about the News Alliance, a cross-industry coalition of champions for news brand advertising of which both Bountiful Cow and Newsworks are members.
“If we don’t have a healthy, functioning news sector, we’re in deep trouble on both counts”, he said. “That’s one of the most interesting facets of the Alliance — it’s the first time that news media has come together across TV, radio, print and digital, all coming together with agencies and trade bodies to represent the importance of news media to a flourishing media ecosystem”.
Also on the podcast was iProspect UK CEO James Bailey, who held a particularly bullish view on the “resurgence” of news brands’ importance to his agency’s large-scale clients.
He said: “We’ve had some really notable successes with clients pivoting back to news brands in particularly, the retailer Next, Netflix and Ikea as well… going full throttle back into the market.”
Bailey also mentioned the importance of the trust agencies can foster with news editorial teams to ensure advertising appears in the correct places, as well as the effectiveness clients such as Carlsberg have seen by advertising around quality journalism.
“Quality news advertising in proximity to quality news journalism has far greater attentive metrics than other formats”, he said. “You’re capturing a person at the point at which they’re really invested in that topic they’re reading about… You want your ad next to that. That’s what news brands offer.”
Listen to the full podcast episode on Campaign’s website.
