From brand safety to brand suitability: why avoiding hard news could be damaging your brand

Brands have become increasingly concerned about where their online ads are being placed, but this concern can be over-cautious when advertisers blacklist content on premium publisher sites without an understanding of the context of the editorial.

Need to know

  • The use of automated brand safety tools is leading advertisers to blacklist content on premium publisher sites without an understanding of the context of the editorial.
  • An article published by in The Guardian about the World Chess Championships, for instance, was flagged for supposedly containing violent content.
  • Newsworks, the UK body for newsbrands, wanted to investigate whether ad responses were affected by their position in hard or soft news environments.
  • Working with Neuro-Insight, Newsworks recruited 133 print and digital newsbrand readers aged between 18 and 65 in London and Sheffield.
  • Participants’ brain responses were measured...

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