Are advertisers ‘swimming in a sea of garbage’?
Advertisers are becoming more conscious about the media companies they collaborate with.
This was according to Prospect editor Alan Rusbridger, who said on The Media Leader Podcast earlier this year: “The advertisers I’ve spoken to are dismayed by the thought of their content swimming in this sea of garbage — I’m using a polite word — because it’s not good for their brands. It’s not good for trust in information.”
In an era when news is characterised by misinformation and false statements, why would advertisers want to contribute to this confusion? Especially given the negative consequences these collaborations could have on a brand’s reputation?
Advertisers’ reluctance to invest in publishers was discussed during the Cannes Lions festival in June. Carolina Proto, director of global media at EssilorLuxottica, said: “Our budget is already lower than we need it to be, so to potentially risk that negative brand sentiment [around news], we’d rather just go where we know it’s safe.”
It is important that advertisers focus on maximising their profits and influence, but also remain cognisant that their campaigns could be associated with falsehoods. A resurgence in investment in media relies on media companies restoring their reputations as trustworthy outlets.
Listen to an excerpt of the episode or read a transcript of the conversation below:
The Media Leader: The concern that I would raise as a young journalist myself is that’s really valuable journalism that you are able to support, but many advertisers don’t seem particularly interested in supporting especially that longer-form journalism if it isn’t being read by that many people because their KPIs are pretty short-termist — they want reach.
Obviously, Prospect has the privilege of having a very loyal subscriber base. I don’t know actually how much of your revenue comes from advertising versus subscription. Maybe you can enlighten me.
Rusbridger: I would say it’s about 30% from advertising.
The Media Leader: OK, so relatively well-insulated especially compared to Reach, which is all ad-supported practically. So I guess the question that I have, especially on behalf of our listeners who are mostly advertisers, media planners, those types of folks, is how do you make that type of journalism worth funding beyond just the fact of “well, it’s really good for democracy” or for ethical reasons?
Rusbridger: Well, let’s pull the camera back and see where we are in the media information system.
So we are in a world of information chaos. We know that. We know we’re in a world where people don’t know who to believe or what to believe increasingly. We know there are bad players who are deliberately pumping out information that is wrong, false. We’re 13 minutes in and we haven’t yet even mentioned Donald Trump.
Why don’t we mention Donald Trump? You’ve got the most powerful man in the world actively trying to create a world in which disinformation, misinformation flourish and fact-based journalism don’t and it’s really frightening. And advertisers aren’t part of that world and I think the advertisers I’ve spoken to are dismayed by the thought of their content swimming in this sea of garbage — I’m using a polite word — because it’s not good for their brands. It’s not good for trust in information.
There may be some brands that don’t care about any of that stuff and are just there for the quick hit. Fine. But there are enough brands and people in charge of companies who realise that this world of trust, which includes their products, is dissolving rapidly.
So I think that if you take the longer view, then I think supporting the kind of journalism that is fact-based and isn’t rushing for the sugar burst of an instant click or an instant bit of flimflam that will get you the page view but doesn’t counter anything in the long term… that’s hopeless.
The Media Leader: How sustainable do you think current business models are across journalism? Not just [Prospect], but could be any title, particularly the ad-supported ones I suppose?
Rusbridger: Wow. That’s a huge question.
The Media Leader: [Laughs] If anyone can answer it, it would be you.
Rusbridger: Well, I mean the danger in society now is that you get elite media who are going to be just fine. So the people with the money are going to put support. The Wall Street Journal is going to be fine. The Financial Times is going to be fine. The Times of London. The New York Times. And they are going to have relatively limited readership and then the dangers you get in a society of 80-90% of people who are not — especially in this country — who are not subscribers to those.
The Media Leader: And it’s limited because it requires a subscription?
Rusbridger: Yeah. I mean, if you look at the Reuters Institute digital news report, every year the figure in Britain of people who are prepared to pay for news is stuck on 9% and it’s been stuck on 9% for about 10 years now.
So you’ve got 90% who don’t want to pay you for news. Well, that’s OK in Britain to some extent because we have the BBC, which is very widely available. You can see what’s happening in America, where something like 95% don’t subscribe to The New York Times and are at the mercy of any of the lousy information that is there.