‘Media responsibility is now corporate social responsibility’: Marketers reassess brand safety controls to navigate a divided America

By Seb Joseph

Over the next few hours, marketers across the U.S. will be watching the events of Inauguration Day closely, ready to pause, tweak or block ads from appearing against problematic content should things go sideways. While some marketers will stick to blunt tactics like blocking ads from news sites entirely, many are turning to more nuanced strategies that also ensure their dollars support quality journalism. Desperate times call for accurate measures.

Of course, there will always be those marketers whose first response in any crisis is to steer ads clear of news — media owners be damned. It happened when rioters stormed the Capitol building in Washington D.C. earlier this month. But often, those were short, precautionary pauses and the ads were back on the same sites within 48 hours. Brand suitability strategies are showing signs of strain, but not panic.

“Ahead of the inauguration, we’re advising clients not to rely on keyword lists and instead take a more considered approach to where they invest in media to protect their brands,” said Joshua Lowcock, global brand safety officer at Universal McCann.

Emphasis on “considered.” Keyword blocklists are increasingly part of rather than the crux of brand suitability strategies.

In fact, Universal McCann execs are telling clients to run rather than block as many ads as necessary around the inauguration so long as they buy ads from either lists of approved sites and words or private marketplaces of premium inventory. Before those ads are bought, they’re mapped against a calendar of all the events related to last year’s presidential election, from the day the ballots were confirmed to the middle of next month. The message is clear: prepare for the unexpected.

Other agencies are sending similar messages, including Dentsu, Havas and GroupM, by encouraging clients to be proactive, not reactive, to unsuitable content in and around the inauguration.

“Brand safety technology helps but there’s a more nuanced issue around suitability at play here that just having an exclusion list won’t address,” said Michael Law, president of Dentsu International’s Amplifi. “We’re talking to our clients about the context of their ads as much as we do those brand safety mechanisms.”

Behind the scenes, these discussions are forcing advertisers to think long and hard about whether cheap ads matter more than being responsible.

“There was a concern that being stricter about where ads run could throttle reach and subsequently increase the cost of media whereas now we’re having conversations on why protecting people and doing the right thing matters,” said Lowcock. “Clients are starting to think about media responsibility in the same way they do corporate social responsibility.”

A year ago things were very different.

When the first wave of the coronavirus was at its peak, keyword blocking was widely used by marketers to avoid swathes of subsequent negative news. The downsides of relaxing that stance were too steep for those marketers at the time.

But the more those marketers used keyword and contextual targeting to keep their ads safe, the more suspicious they became. After all, marketers are still finding their ads on …read more

Source:: Digiday