The brand safety risk of advertising on trusted news sites isn’t only overblown – it doesn’t exist.
Reliable, high-quality news sources that aren’t intentionally polarizing deserve ad dollars – full stop, says Vanessa Otero, CEO and founder of Ad Fontes Media, a startup that rates the news for bias and reliability, speaking on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Brands, of course, have the prerogative to advertise against news. It’s their money, and it makes sense not to spend it supporting false information, propaganda, hate speech, sexually explicit content and gratuitously graphic violence.
But shunning legit news sites for fear of blowback from consumers isn’t a concern with much basis in reality, Otero says. Rather, it’s a knee-jerk reaction that conflates violent content with descriptions of violence.
Any advertisers adding the words “Israel” or “Hamas” to their keyword blocklists right now should take a beat and rethink that decision, she says.
Though brands might find themselves under an unwanted spotlight if their ad dollars support extremist content (left or right), credible news sources (left or right) should be immune from getting caught in the brand safety net.
“It just doesn’t happen that people say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe that this brand advertised next to this unpleasant news story [in this reputable publication],” Otero says. “People are smart, and keyword blocking is dumb.”
Also in this episode: The challenge of promoting media literacy in a polarized society, why Otero doesn’t like the term “misinformation,” intellectual property challenges in the age of AI, the question of whether Twitter/X can sell itself as safe for advertisers and the experience of raising money as an underrepresented startup founder.
For more articles featuring Vanessa Otero, click here.
