Ukraine invasion exposes balancing act of brand responsibility in advertising

By Ronan Shields

Russia’s war on Ukraine is forcing advertisers to think long and hard about where is and isn’t acceptable for their ads to run. As a result, news publishers are not seeing ad revenues grow despite upticks in traffic.

It’s a familiar dilemma: its most in-demand content can see corresponding advertising fees rates drop by as much as a fifth as advertisers prioritize caution over civic responsibility, according to Digiday sources.

The crisis in Ukraine is also unfolding with a new lens on brand safety that advertisers have put on during the pandemic.

The impact on publisher revenue

After dealing with multiple instances of heightened brand-safety awareness around news content over the last two years (the COVID outbreak, the Stop the Steal movement, the murder of George Floyd and the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol), media agencies are generally trying to navigate their clients more carefully through news content rather than just shutting them down altogether.

When we just completely pull back from news, we turn our backs in a lot of ways to the companies that are promoting serious quality journalism.

Ryan Eusanio, managing director of digital activation with Omnicom Media Group

Joshua Lowcock, global chief media officer at IPG’s UM Worldwide, said his counsel to clients who ask (UM’s clients include Behr paints, Grubhub, Enterprise Holdings and retailer H&M) is to “stay on quality, legitimate news” content. “We continue to encourage clients to support journalism and news. No one is hitting pause on spending given [that] the invasion hasn’t resulted in domestic stay-at-home orders, close of retail trade, to name a few.”

But as with other holding company brand safety specialists, that’s not a blanket decision given the specific nuances of each client. For example, Lowcock said he has asked CNN not to run chyron overlays or picture-in-picture content with ads featuring IPG clients “out of respect for the gravity of the invasion.”

The impact on publisher revenue

Publishers are already feeling the impact. One source in ad ops at a current affairs title told Digiday content discussing the conflict saw CPM rates down by approximately 20% compared to average. They did not provide exact figures.

Other advertisers are examining their exposure to Russian businesses and some are seeking assurances that Kremlin-backed actors don’t use the sprawling automated ad tech ecosystem as a conduit to infiltrate their websites with malware or spread misinformation.

Cory Schnurr, head of marketplace innovation at The Media Trust, a company that helps publishers filter such attacks, said concerns have spiked since the beginning of the week. “Over the weekend we saw Facebook and Twitter trying to shut that down, but with the open programmatic ecosystem that’s a lot more difficult because things [like bids from unknown actors and reselling] are coming from so many different angles,” added Schnurr.

Craig Hughes, vp of corporate development and strategic partnerships at Outbrain, an ad tech company …read more

Source:: Digiday