News: Brand's $4 Billion Blindspot

I'm a recovering news publisher.

I started my career at CBS Radio, managing digital publishing for many of the company's top local news properties in New York City. A month ago today, one of them folded. At one time, WCBS-AM was the most successful radio station in the country. The station was the absolute top of the mountain for anyone working in audio news.

Now, it is gone.

I left CBS 14 years ago, but it was by far the most personally rewarding and exciting part of my career. The economic well-being of the news business has been in the back of my mind ever since.

For years, advertisers have dismissed news content, avoiding it out of fear that placing ads next to sensitive topics could damage their brands. But it’s time to rethink this strategy.

It is a huge problem. Why are we in this situation?

According to a study led by Prohaska Consulting:

"Two-thirds of respondents agree that consumers of high-quality news journalism are a desirable audience segment. Ad tech professionals were less likely to agree with this statement, a finding most likely attributed to ad tech companies more frequently looking at news content from a blocking or filtering lens vs. a holistic one."

Christian Juhl from GroupM testified about the state of advertising on news sites. He pointed out the low percentage of ad spend dedicated to online news platforms and the industry’s over-cautious approach towards news content.

“Only 1.28% of our clients’ ad spending is on online news sites,” said Juhl, Global CEO of GroupM.

There are now years worth of research providing compelling evidence that advertising alongside news content, even hard news, is not only safe but can also boost campaign performance.

Publishers bear some responsibility for the current situation, as they have not sufficiently tagged and contextualized their content to give advertisers confidence in page-level specifics.

Additionally, monetization platforms lack robust tools to convey this contextual data, leaving brands uncertain. This gap has fueled the rise of third-party contextual-tech providers who fill in these data shortcomings, stepping into a role that publishers could arguably take on themselves.

The Myth of "Unsafe" News

It’s a far too common belief that advertising near controversial news stories could tarnish a brand’s image. But a study by Stagwell debunks this notion, revealing that ads adjacent to "not brand safe" stories performed almost as well as those next to "safe" content—67.2% vs. 68.3% effectiveness.