The News Alliance has launched a campaign urging marketers to reconsider their reluctance to advertise in news environments, arguing that brands risk missing out on audiences by excluding news from their media plans.
Launching today in line with Journalism Matters Week, the #AskForNews campaign aims to challenge assumptions around brand safety and the perceived risks of advertising alongside news content.
According to Ofcom, 96% of UK adults consume news across a range of platforms, yet concerns about news environments continue to influence advertising decisions.
Built around the line “There’s a funny thing going on in advertising“, the campaign uses satirical humour to highlight what The News Alliance describes as an irrational industry behaviour: avoiding a media that reaches almost the entire adult population.
The campaign was developed by Bountiful Cow’s in-house creative team and is aimed primarily at senior marketers, who The News Alliance believes have the power to challenge existing brand safety practices and reconsider how news features in media plans.
The activity will run until the end of November across print, digital and audio news environments, including The Guardian, The Standard, The Telegraph, Reach, and Sky News as well as trade titles, The Media Leader and Campaign.
Despite targeting senior marketers, The News Alliance has deliberately chosen to run the campaign within news environments themselves. The coalition says this demonstrates confidence in the quality of trusted journalism, allows marketers to experience the campaign in context and reinforces the commercial value of advertising alongside news. It also points out that marketers are consumers of news themselves.
Sarah Jones, chair of The News Alliance, said: “News media remains one of the most trusted and widely consumed media environments in the UK, yet all too often, it is overlooked during the planning process.
“Through #AskForNews, we want to encourage marketers to reconsider the misconceptions that have developed around news and recognise the real value it can deliver for their brand and business.”
The News Alliance hopes the campaign will stimulate wider debate about the role of news in modern media planning and encourage more advertisers to include trusted news brands across platforms in their media strategies.
