It’s become a cliché by this point that no advertiser wants to end up on the cover of The Wall Street Journal because of a brand safety scandal.
But that fear has caused “a massive overcorrection,” says Mia Libby, the WSJ’s SVP of enterprise, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
It’s okay – and an advertiser’s right – to be cautious about brand safety. It’s their money after all. But excluding all news from programmatic media plans isn’t the answer, she says.
And the fact is that many advertisers are still using the blunt instrument of overly conservative keyword exclusion lists, and it’s to their own disadvantage.
“I understand that there are many news sites and many spots that are not necessarily suitable for certain brands,” she says. “But all of us should not be under that same umbrella by any means, and I would like to see some more nuance.”
Nuance both in how advertisers think about brand safety and in terms of the technology they use to protect themselves from running against unsavory content.
And here’s the irony: There’s been research to prove that ads adjacent to quality news stories about sensitive topics don’t have a negative impact on engagement, and yet overzealous keyword blocking does, because it limits a brand’s reach.
The Wall Street Journal has worked with advertisers, for example, that wanted to avoid running against any mention of an entire country, which affected the deployment of their campaign.
“No one is advocating for running with news everywhere – every single type of news across every platform,” Libby says. “But brands like The Wall Street Journal, which is known for its journalism and its standard of ethics – these are the places where brands should feel really comfortable running adjacent to news.”
Also in this episode: Libby’s Hulk Hogan connection, her take on GARM’s categorization of breaking news and op-ed coverage and why WSJ parent company News Corp’s recent licensing agreement with OpenAI isn’t a deal with the devil. Plus: What you can do to support Evan Gershkovich, the WSJ reporter who’s been falsely accused of espionage and held in a Russian prison since March 2023.
