Advertisers Shy Away From News, Other Sensitivities

Marketers have long been wary about running ads in the news media, concerned that their brands will land next to pieces about terrorism or plane crashes or polarizing political stories.

The Wall Street Journal reports advertising no-go zone seems to keep widening. It is a headache that news publishers can hardly afford. Many are also grappling with subscriber declines and losses in traffic from Google and other tech platforms, and are now making an aggressive push to change advertisers’ perceptions. 

Advertisers’ aversion to news was on full display in the past election, when many marketers paused campaigns, and it hasn’t fully abated, according to industry executives. The news cycle since the election has remained hectic and unattractive to advertisers, with stories about President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet picks, global wars and the shooting of a health-insurance executive in New York.

News organizations recently began publicizing studies that show it really isn’t dangerous for a brand to appear near a sensitive story. At the same time, they say, blunt campaign-planning tools wind up fencing off even harmless content—and those stories’ potentially large audiences—from advertisements. 

Forty percent of the Washington Post’s material is deemed “unsafe” at any given time, said Johanna Mayer-Jones, the paper’s chief advertising officer, referencing a study the company did about a year ago. “The revenue implications of that are significant.” 

While some brands avoid news entirely, many take what they consider to be a more surgical approach. They create lengthy blacklists of words or websites that the company considers off-limits and employ ad technology to avoid such terms. Over time, blacklists have become extremely detailed, serving as a de facto news-blocking tool, publishers said.

A recent blacklist from Microsoft included about 2,000 words, including variations and translations. Words listed include: “attack,” “Biden,” “Trump,” “boycott,” “cocaine,” “collapse,” “Gaza,” “guns,” “racism” and “sink hole,” according to a list viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft declined to comment.  

The lists are used in automated ad buying. Brands aim their ads not at specific websites, but at online audiences with certain characteristics—people with particular shopping or web-browsing histories, for example. Their ads are matched in real time to available inventory for thousands of websites.