In light of recent revelations around the funding of digital news content, alongside yet more damaging industry stories on brand safety, ExchangeWire research lead Mat Broughton discusses what more can be done to fund impartial trusted news content in this feature article, featuring insight from the BBC’s John Williams. 

Cast your mind back to a time before Linda Yaccarino appeared on video like a captive marionette, justifying X’s lawsuit which led to the obliteration of GARM, a 2-person outfit focusing on digital safety and sustainability standards. At a highly partisan US House Judiciary Committee hearing on the now defunct GARM, outgoing GroupM CEO Christian Juhl made a startling revelation: Only 1.28% of clients’ ad budgets are directed towards online news sites.

As part of the same hearing, Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA, was even more bearish on news journalism. In his statement, Patel affirmed that less than 1% of its US advertising spend goes to digital news. Patel then went on to confirm that Unilever spends 20% of its advertising budget on social media platforms, then goes on to list examples of brand safety issues when its ads have appeared next to that social content, including content “glorifying domestic violence” and profiles soliciting “sexual abuse material”.

No examples were provided of cases in which news content had violated Unilever’s standards. And yet it still spends 20x more on social media platforms than on news sites. On that brand safety front, GroupM’s argument on the perils clients face when it comes to advertising on trusted news platforms, that “they do not need to risk advertising in news environments to reach their total audience,” falls flat when its client’s ads appear next to certain extremely unsafe environments as per the latest findings from Adalytics. If only 1.28% of budgets are going to digital news environments, how much is being directed towards low-quality MFA environments?

How can we expect news journalism, an industry historically underpinned by advertising, to operate effectively when its slice of the pie is so small? Why does more funding go to the ramblings of neighbours with lost cats than it does to accredited journalists operating to strict codes of conduct?

Reach, trust, and UGC

One advantage that social media platforms unquestionably have over individual news platforms is reach. Why advertise against 710 million CNN visits when you can advertise against six billion Instagram visits (per SimilarWeb)? However, reach-at-any-cost is reductive, and ignores the positive effects of advertising in high-quality environments. Recent analysis from harrisX suggests that 73% of US consumers follow the news either very or somewhat closely, and that political news (67%) is followed more closely than stereotypical “safe harbours” within news such as sports (50%) and entertainment (51%). 

Moreover, the content within news items was found to have little impact on purchase intent. For example, average purchase intent for ads placed against news articles covering the Middle East conflict was 62%. The average purchase intent for ads placed against business news? 62%. A previous study conducted by the IAB also found that consumers trust brands more when appearing adjacent to news content, especially breaking news stories.

The increasing funding of social platforms has led to a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario for many news platforms, in that advertisers won’t fund news journalism because of polarising content, but news is increasingly posting polarising content to maximise views (and therefore advertising revenue), for the few advertisers who do spend with them - which are more partisan by nature.

John Williams, vice president, Asia South region, advertising sales, BBC Studios Global Media & Streaming, comments on how the rise of disinformation should instead be seen as an opportunity for impartial news platforms, commenting, “News is most adversely affected by the escalation of disinformation/misinformation, further compounded by the rise of generative AI and partisan UGC. The effect on audiences can be a rising distrust which challenges news publishers. This, in fact, is a fantastic opportunity for premium news organisations to set the agenda in delivering honest, impartial, and accurate news and reconnecting with sceptical audiences to rebuild trust and usage.

“With 2024 being the year of elections, there are great chances to “reset“ audiences' trust in news content – for BBC News, the elections are a key time when audiences are looking to stay regularly updated with news content and accommodating the needs of audiences and commercial clients is central to our planning and activities.”

News in the cookieless future

Despite Google’s public flip-flopping on the axing of the third-party cookie, the reality is that traditional third-party cookie addressability is set to fall to a minor slither of total inventory. This in turn is driving innovation within the news industry towards contextual tools and first-party data based on reader logins.

“Whilst there is a general move away from over-reliance on behavioural targeting in planning, contextual targeting has always been part of the media planning mix at the BBC, and so we don’t see this as seismic. If it provides greater data and understanding of the importance and efficacy of news as an advertising context, then this is all positive,” comments Williams.

“With regards to brand safety, the BBC works with both industry leading tech partners and our own BBC human editors across all of our English and 42 language websites (BBC World Service local language websites) to ensure that editorial news content and context is suitable for advertisers prior to publication.”

What more can be done to encourage brand spending on digital news content?

According to Williams, three things are needed to support new funding, or reinvestment, into digital news content:

1. Insights: to support the qualitative and quantitative narrative around the effectiveness of news as an advertising medium, with a renewed focus on content and context.
2. Access: Publishers need to be everywhere our audiences are choosing to access their news: TV, digital, audio, social media etc - publishers need to provide holistic seamless integrated platforms for advertisers
3. Courage: Advertisers (and agencies) need to be less afraid of the “News” in general and treat their potential customers/publisher audiences with respect. Premium news audiences are sophisticated individuals – they recognise the difference between editorial and advertising, so have the courage to remain committed to your customers/audiences by remaining present on TV/platform when news stories break and develop: it won’t hurt your brand in the long run.”