News publishers call out stringent brand safety policies at IAB NewFronts

Major news publishers banded together at the 2024 IAB NewFronts to call for advertisers to review their brand safety protocols, which are impacting their ability to monetise as misinformation continues to rise.

The pitch at the annual advertising event struck a more serious tone than years past, reflecting an industry that is fighting for survival amid swirling financial pressures.

“We’ve focused [the IAB stage] on news because it’s an election year, and the news industry is in a really tough spot. It’s never been more important for us to have quality journalism—for the sake of our democracy, if nothing else,” said David Cohen, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The publishing industry’s ad revenues are forecast to decline 4.2% in 2024, according to Magna’s latest forecast, while digital companies, including social-media firms, streamers and online retailers, are expected to boost sales by 12%.

Publishers blame their declining fortunes on advertisers’ brand safety protocols, which they argue are more stringently enforced on news than they are on social media.

“It’s an issue of brands being very insecure about whether news is a safe environment,” Lora Logan, VP of sales, East Coast and Midwest at the Guardian US, told Campaign US ahead of the Monday event.

Logan said working around brand safety parameters has been a “systematic issue” for the last decade, but it has become more complicated recently, and the impact has become more severe.

“We’re seeing more and more news outlets, especially the local ones, closing or not having funding to continue to report on important things to the people that live in those communities,” she said.

Photo: Brandon Doerrer

Some publishers have blamed brand safety for their closures; interim editor in chief Lauren Tousignant named Jezebel’s brand safety risk as “one of the biggest factors” that led G/O Media to shut down the site and lay off its 23 editorial staff in early November. The feminist digital publisher was acquired and resurrected by Paste Magazine a few weeks later.

As a result, many journalist-owned newsrooms have deprioritised ad revenue to rely almost exclusively on subscriptions.

It’s not just niche publishers that are affected; Logan said The Guardian has witnessed a decline in revenue due to advertisers blocking impressions. As a consequence, it has put a greater focus on “soft” verticals like culture, entertainment, travel, and sports that are less likely to cause brand safety issues “to keep the money coming in,” she said.

“This is a critical, industry-wide issue — and one that all publishers are facing,” echoed Tim Wastney, SVP of sales, marketing and brand partnerships at BBC Studios.

New breed publishers favour subscription revenue as brand safety controls cut off ad supply.

Brand safety tools have become more competent at detecting context and offering a more “surgical” approach beyond broad block lists, according to Mark Zagorski, chief executive of brand safety and measurement firm DoubleVerify.

Yet blunt keyword blocking remains a common approach, especially during times of conflict. This is despite publishers like The Guardian preemptively closing ad slots on topics about tragedy or death to protect brands. “We will never intentionally profit on tragedy,” said Logan.

During Monday's panel, Deva Bronson, EVP and global head of brand assurance at Dentsu, noted that block lists can be problematic because they’re often not updated. When onboarding a recent client, she found that it still had the name ‘Ariana Grande’ blocked from when a suicide bomber attacked her Manchester concert in 2017.

A moral obligation
Commentaries from news publishers, both in conversations with Campaign and at the NewFronts, reflected an urgent tone about the need to support trusted news in order to protect democracy, especially in an election year.

“With misinformation spreading faster and more easily than ever before, brands' support of quality, trusted journalism should be imperative,” said Wastney.

But Cohen said honing in on the right thing to do “sometimes gets a deaf ear” from advertisers. Under pressure to drive sales with fewer resources, marketers are more preoccupied with business performance and results, he suggested.

“If this is an environment that does that across the funnel, that’s something that I think resonates more strongly,” he said.

DoubleVerify’s Zagorski mirrored: “Advertisers want to do the right thing, but they can’t do it to an extent that it’s detrimental to what their real jobs are. CMOs have to sell cars and shampoo. They’re not nonprofit organizations looking to support news.”

Digital platforms have prospered in recent years by honing in on performance, he added.

“If you can go to Amazon and they can show how you ran an ad here and that your products sold here; that’s a pretty compelling value proposition,” he said. “That’s hard for a publisher to compete with.”

As Logan questioned whether platforms like TikTok are being held to the same brand safety standards that publishers are, Zagorski noted that advertisers may be more lax in such environments because they perform so well.

“Brand safety standards are consistent from place to place; whether advertisers choose to acknowledge them is the question. Are advertisers more comfortable with brand safety violations in social than in direct publishers? Some may be just because the environment is so compelling,” said Zagorski.

The value of news
Instead of only focusing on the importance of news, leaders of The New York Times, CNN, BBC News, NPR and NBCUniversal News Group opened the IAB’s news event with a discussion about the value of their readers. Panelists highlighted their young, engaged and well-educated audiences and worked to dispel the myth that Gen Z isn’t interested in major publications anymore.

(Photo credit: Brandon Doerrer)
“People who think that young people aren’t interested and engaged in news should visit any American campus right now,” said Mark Thompson, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide, referring to ongoing protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Logan highlighted how overemphasizing brand safety can hurt performance, calling out the results of a test she conducted on medium to high-risk sites that meet strict brand safety parameters. The same campaign delivered 37% brand lift on less safe websites versus 4% on the safer ones, she said.

“If you’re running news and there’s a high risk, it’s not going to impact what your brand lift might look like,” she said. “The more you layer on, the less brand lift you might see.”

Agency execs also expressed frustration that many brands opt out of news to avoid controversial topics without understanding how that impacts their businesses. Instead, they end up on low-quality made-for-advertising sites that do little to drive revenue.

Why 'made-for-advertising' websites are harmful to advertisers and how to avoid using them

“We’ve overcorrected and caused a number of problems,” Dentsu's Bronson said. “Have we seen direct evidence of brands being affected by adjacency to breaking, violent or controversial news? I don’t know that we [have].”

(Photo credit: Brandon Doerrer)
The good news is that publishers are poised to benefit from the upcoming U.S. election, since political advertisers tend to funnel spend into media that is local or can be geo-targeted.

“I view the elections as a great time to lean in when others are on the sideline and take a bigger share [of voice],” said Josh Stinchcomb, global chief revenue officer at The Wall Street Journal, during the event.

The Guardian recently told Digiday it is actively pitching to political candidates and advocacy groups for the first time to win some dollars in the upcoming election.

Shift in publishers presenting
Digital-first news publishers like Buzzfeed and Vice that were once the stars of the show have been replaced at the IAB NewFronts by more traditional, storied brands like the BBC and Condé Nast.

Zagorski said this is reflective of both a move towards quality, trusted brands as well as the growth of free news on social media.

“It’s kind of the barbelling of the world, which is high quality on one end, mass media on the other end. The middle is what really gets killed,” he said.