Anonymous group of ad execs asks for intervention on ad industry’s funding of hate
An anonymous group of senior UK advertising executives is calling on the Government to regulate the industry to curb advertisers from funding hate speech and harmful content online.
“We are seriously concerned over our industry’s role in monetising hate through media spending,” a memo from the group, convened earlier this year by the non-profit Inside Track, reads. “Many of those who dedicate time every day to creating hateful content — whether they be racist, homophobic or misogynistic influencers — simply could not do so without us.”
The group comprises between one and two dozen senior leaders who hold, or until recently held, senior roles at media and creative agencies, as well as adtech companies and holding groups. This is the group’s first significant public communication since it launched in January, warning that the advertising industry is failing its moral and civic duties to society.
The latest memo accuses the advertising industry of abdicating responsibility in two ways:
1. “[The industry is] not leveraging our collective power against the tech companies to demand better controls on what content is monetised, despite media spend being fundamental to the social platforms’ business models”;
2. “Adtech companies are churning out expensive and inadequate brand safety tools which do more to protect margins than safeguard brands and consumers”.
The group alleges the reasons for failing to take action are structural.
Failures of transparency, accountability and incentives
“Opacity defines much of digital advertising,” the memo reads. Tech platforms, it says, “have monopolistic control over prime ad placements and make it difficult for agencies to know where their ads are ending up”.
This occurs even as a large share of platforms’ ad revenue comes from media agencies, as agencies have “fail[ed] to negotiate with the platforms to share their data to impression level or communicate honestly to our clients that we do not have full oversight”.
The lack of transparency likewise applies to adtech supply chains, where intermediaries are accused of siphoning media budgets for “brand safety tools which are not solving the problem and often punish legitimate news outlets and newly monetised channels”.
Anonymous group of senior ad industry leaders warns of industry-wide moral failing
The group also argues that the ad industry has demonstrated its lack of accountability, writing that it “does not accept that it plays a critical role in the financing of hate, and that it is a beneficiary from the status quo”.
Media practitioners “try and maintain an air of neutrality” by declining to advise clients which platforms to spend their money on, “shrug[ging] off professional responsibility” while “auto-enrolling [clients] in spending on certain platforms which fail to moderate hate content”, often placing their brand values at risk.
Meanwhile, practitioners also “choose to not push back on the tech platforms we spend on every day, while watching them shirk responsibility on hate speech under the banner of free expression”. Media practitioners, the group argues, “position ourselves as powerless relative to Big Tech”, when in fact the platforms are reliant on collective media investment rather than the other way around.
The memo acknowledges that part of the lack of pushback stems from perverse incentives. Media agencies invest in paid social because it is “much more profitable than other types of spend” for the agency, with higher margins than traditional media.
Agencies, already squeezed by “thinning margins” and tech companies that are “taking on more direct relationships with advertisers”, move to offer “cheap reach” and “impressive metrics to show to clients” rather than the costlier options of sourcing quality inventory and tracking individual ad placements.
Calls to action
One member of the Inside Track group told The Media Leader advertisers and their agencies do have “a lot of power” to demand change from platforms, but that it is “not being used”, in part out of fear that any industry collaboration on safety standards could be construed as illegal market coordination by bad faith actors in the tech industry.
X owner Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), while seen as legally meritless, nevertheless succeeded in shutting down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The memo notes that the GARM lawsuit “had a psychological impact” on the industry, quashing advocacy for responsible media out of fear at the precise time that rising anti-DEI rhetoric and holding group consolidation further limited capacity for change.
Meanwhile, agency leaders involved in negotiating trading arrangements, the insider said, are “always hesitant to upset the big players” for fear of reprisal.
“They’re getting cheaper media by taking on these risks,” the spokesperson added, referring to the potential downside of backlash to brands found advertising next to hateful content.
The Inside Track group has been both praised for its positions and criticised for speaking out anonymously. The insider explained to The Media Leader, as did Inside Track’s director, that the group hopes that by raising concerns publicly, it will inspire more individuals to come forward and be bolder in pushing for change internally at their own media organisations.
The group is warning that “we are in a political situation where those pushing for material action on funding hate are ignored or sidelined by our trade associations, holding companies, major adtech firms and agencies”, and that the advertising industry “will resist regulation and underplay what is within our gift to change to government and clients alike.”
It is therefore calling on the Government to “take input from a broader group of industry experts”, effectively bypassing existing trade bodies to better understand the problem.
As the senior advertising insider explained, industry trade bodies are both too slow to act and have become captured by the interests of the very tech platforms, which have grown to become the UK’s largest ad sellers.
“It’s difficult to act as a group,” the insider admitted. “There is government work that is needed here. […] We must make the industry susceptible to change.”
The memo reads: “We need better regulation of industry to promote a democracy that protects legitimate journalism, punishes rather than rewards hate speech, and makes brand safety fundamental to the design of digital advertising”.
The group is also calling on clients to “demand greater clarity from agencies on where ads are being placed” and to “stop accepting that when their content ends up alongside hate influencers it is a ‘one-off mistake’ that can be forgiven”.
In addition, it is asking investors to “hold major listed companies accountable to the ethical failure we are exhibiting by not addressing this issue”.
The memo concludes: “Industry associations and executives have so far had the opportunity to drive this agenda independently, but we haven’t seen commensurate progress on the issue relative to the harm. We now call on our government, clients and investors to help us.”