How the World Cup Highlights One of the Biggest Issues Journalism Faces
Blocklists of words to ensure advertisers are on brand safe online pages are costing the news industry millions
The media landscape is changing at pace – and keeping up with the latest developments and moves will give every comms expert an advantage over their rivals. Every week take a look at the media business from mainstream and ‘legacy’ media to cutting edge tech and the latest trends and developments – and how you can use that know-how.
The problems modern journalism faces: slumping newspaper sales; a diluted advertising market; changes to Google algorithms and the brilliance of AI.
We have discussed all of them (and no doubt will do so again).
But with the World Cup barely a week away, there’s another issue that is worth highlighting – and it is the daftest and most depressing of the lot.
Advertisers’ blocklists of words are designed to mean that companies can have their adverts on brand-safe pages online.
Now I have some sympathy with businesses in the broadest sense. British Airways naturally don’t want an advert for cheap flights on pages covering a plane crash.
But because of the automated nature of the placing of advertising online, that requires systems which search for troublesome words and then veto ads on pages where it finds “offending” copy.
It came into its own during the start of the Ukraine war when advertisers baulked at being linked with the graphic coverage of Russia’s invasion. So, stories featuring words such as Kyiv, Russia, missiles, and killed would see no advertising.
Since then the blocklist fad has broadened further. So much that one advertiser’s blocklist reportedly has 34,000 words (in multiple languages) on it which are not acceptable.
Which brings me back to the World Cup, the greatest sporting event of every four years.
Except what should be a brilliant opportunity for publishers to report live from the event with live blogs, match reports, analysis and breaking stories, is likely to be marred by advertising bans. Let me explain.
According to Mantis – Reach’s brand safety and contextual advertising platform – almost half (45%) of the publisher’s Euro 2024 final coverage was blocked from receiving advertising having been wrongfully deemed “not brand safe”. Why? Because of the blanket blocklisting of phrases like “shootout” or “attack”.
Jo Allan, CEO of Newsworks, the marketing body for the UK news industry, says the situation has got worse in the last six years. Newsworks launched a campaign Back. Don’t Block to persuade advertisers to support journalism not to commercially censor it. She says: “Blocklists have got even longer. They’ve proliferated and spawned. More have sprung up, and they keep growing. Words get added and rarely removed. It’s impossible to know just how many there are and frankly, it’s a frightening prospect.”
It’s so bad that Newsworks have relaunched their campaign.
Advertiser blocklists are directly penalising trusted journalism and the commercial, long-term sustainability of the media, at a time when global press freedom is at a low ebb, according to the World Press Freedom Index.
They hit mainstream media when fake news and less honest media players often escape the draconian restrictions
And blocklists also treat the audience like idiots. Do ordinary people really think that, for instance, because Nescafe or Land Rover have an advert on a webpage next to a court case or a report of the war in Iran, that they are actively (or indeed passively) supporting violence or crime? It’s just nonsense and it’s damaging.
Frustratingly there is research showing that I’m right on this and brand safe is a con.
But yet it seems to make a limited difference. A recent poll by The News Alliance – a cross-industry coalition to support trusted news and journalism – found that 47% of agencies and 42% of advertisers say they will not relax their brand safety settings.
So, something a little different today. A small call to arms for PRs and comms pros to see if you can use your clout to help out. Here are a few things you might be able to do.
