Home Podcast Social Distancing With Friends UM’s Joshua Lowcock On The Facebook Boycott And The Brand Safety Battle

UM’s Joshua Lowcock On The Facebook Boycott And The Brand Safety Battle

SHARE:

Social Distancing With Friends

Brand safety is always top of mind for advertisers. But it’s become more important than ever as issues from coronavirus misinformation to the ongoing Facebook ad boycott dominate industry headlines.

For Joshua Lowcock, chief digital officer at UM and global brand safety officer at IPG Mediabrands, the renewed focus is an opportunity for advertisers to hold platforms and publishers across the board to a higher standard.

“The challenges to Facebook are not unique to them,” he says. “We need to use this moment to hold all platforms more accountable, and really make advertisers think about what they fund and where their ads run.”

While a boycott may not do much harm to Facebook’s bottom line, it does increase pressure on the company to accept accountability – and make real changes.

“It shouldn’t be thought of as a boycott for 30 days,” Joshua says. “These are ongoing conversations that need to be had with partners … every time you have a meeting. They’ll never be perfect, but we can keep pushing them toward perfection.”

To help advertisers frame brand safety in the context of their corporate responsibility goals, UM introduced its Media Responsibility Principles in June, which break the massive issue of brand safety on the internet down into digestible pieces so brands can tackle it head on.

Joshua talks with AdExchanger from Manhattan, where he’s been riding out the pandemic since March. During the lockdown he kept busy by publishing a book based on the diary of a relative who was a prisoner of war during World War II.

“Reading about someone who went through an absolutely awful time has given me a great sense of perspective,” he said.

Must Read

Uber Launches A Platform-Specific Attention Metric With Adelaide And Kantar

Uber Advertising, in partnership with Adelaide and Kantar, launched a first-of-its-type custom attention metric score for its platform advertisers.

Google Shakes Off Its Troubles And Outperforms On Revenue Yet Again

Alphabet reported on Wednesday that its total Q3 revenue was $102.3 billion, up 16% year over year, while net profit increased by a third to $35 billion.

Olivia Kory, Haus (Photo credit: Sean T. Smith)

For Meta Marketers, Automation Isn’t Always The Advantage (But It’s Complicated)

Meta says “trust the machine” – but marketers are finding out that automated ad platforms, including Advantage+, don’t always know best.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: Header Bidding Rapper (Wrapper!)

Prebid.org Is At A Crossroads, And Must Now Decide Whose Interests It Serves

Prebid’s future is up for grabs as the open-source project grows apart from the IAB Tech Lab, the industry’s self-appointed standards authority.

Rest In Privacy, Sandbox

Last week, after nearly six years of development and delays, Google officially retired its Privacy Sandbox.
Which means it’s time for a memorial service.

AWS Launches A Cloud Infrastructure Service For Ad Tech

AWS RTB Fabric offers ad tech platforms more streamlined integrations with ecosystem and infrastructure partners, allegedly lower latency compared to the public internet and discounts on data transfers.