Nearly half (45%) of Euro 2024 final coverage across Reach publications was blocked from receiving advertising, having been wrongfully deemed “not brand safe”.
That is according to Mantis, a brand-safety and contextual ad solutions provider initially launched as part of Reach in 2019.
Mantis found that brands opting to keyword-block terms like “shot”, “shoot”, “shoot-out” and “attack” — likely to avoid having ads placed against news reports of violent conflicts — missed out on advertising against Euro football matches and negatively impacted publisher revenues.
It similarly found that 56% of Reach articles published around England’s semi-final match against the Netherlands were also blocked by advertisers using such keywords. According to Mantis, this amounted to 174 brands blocking those pages from advertising.
Mantis was unable to immediately provide an estimate of how much Reach lost out on by having a large proportion of its articles blocked, citing a longer turnaround for analysing the downstream business impacts.
“It is worryingly common when brands rely on a blanket blocklist of keywords in the attempt to deliver brand-safe advertising,” Mantis managing director Fiona Salmon told The Media Leader.
“While there is a need for brands to actively avoid association with potentially controversial or damaging articles, the keyword blocklist approach frequently results in inventory that is contextually relevant, and safe, being blocked. This not only negatively impacts publisher revenue, but also reduces brand exposure to target audiences reading suitable and safe content.”
Salmon called the issue of keyword-blocking “particularly prevalent” with sports reporting because of the common overlap of language used in sport and in more controversial stories.
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Other keywords commonly blocked in relation to sport coverage include “crashed” and “crashing”, in reference to a team exiting a tournament; “attack”, “attacker” and “attacking”; “disastrous” as in a poor performance; and “steal” as in stealing the ball or stealing the show.
In an interview with The Media Leader earlier this year, World Media Group CEO Jamie Credland singled out keyword-blocking as the most significant problem facing publishers even in an era of uncertainty brought by developments in generative AI and changes to audience acquisition via search and social media.
“The biggest challenge is advertisers or marketers who are shying away from election or war coverage, who are perhaps using keyword blocklists in an indiscriminate way and may not even be aware of it,” Credland said.
He added that the problem is not new but has worsened over time, with brands and media agencies increasingly erring on the side of caution out of fear of sparking controversy and backlash.
Olympics another opportunity
The upcoming Olympic Games, which begin in Paris on 26 July, offer another opportunity for brands to advertise against high-traffic sport content.
However, Salmon warned that publishers “are already experiencing a huge impact on Olympics content” because many advertisers “inexplicably” still have “Paris” placed on blocklists because of the 2015 ISIL terrorist attacks in the French capital.
“There must be a more serious overhaul of brand-safety solutions if advertisers, brands and agencies are to stop missing out on inventory that is both safe and contextually relevant,” she said, adding that blocklists’ “lack of nuance and agility are seriously hurting publishers too”.
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