The relative advantage of ‘unsafe’ news content

Opinion

Brand safety blocking technology prevents up to 40% of high-quality news inventory from running ads. Bountiful Cow looks at what happens when the blockers are removed.

The attention narrative is a priority on most planners’ and clients’ agendas. However, the marketing effectiveness space is noisy, complicated and often hard to keep up with.

Today’s media planner must simultaneously master channel, platform, and technology transformation, interrogate effectiveness data, and maintain a sharp focus on their client’s business goals. It’s a lot, but it’s why we are all in this game, it’s exciting and ever evolving. 

However, has it meant that we, as planners and the marketing community, have missed how attentive quality news is, in favour of other, sexier channels? Do the tech giants have our ear and dictate too much of the plan? Or is it just a result of network agency deals and proprietary trading?

Key findings from Newsworks’ Attention research suggest that something is going on, as it shows:

• News brand display ads get 40% more attention than other general advertising display ads
• Campaigns that include news brands enjoy brand uplifts for all measures, including 32% in action intent
• News brands’ impact on campaign effectiveness has almost doubled since 2018

Yet, investment in news over the period has declined significantly, falling globally 33% since 2019 (Source: WARC, Global Ad Trends Report).

At Bountiful Cow, we are always looking for the ‘Relative Advantage’ for our clients, by which I mean finding the spaces in media (and creative) which resonate with the audience but where the competition is nowhere to be seen.  

Ludicrously, one of those spaces is becoming news.

Not only do we believe news is effective, but we also noticed that agencies and brands were using ad blockers to prevent their ads from appearing on the most attentive content across quality news sites. Brand safety blocking technology prevents up to 40% of high-quality news inventory from running ads.

Because it is ‘unsafe’.

Football content is blocked, as it contains words like ‘attack’ and ‘shot’… articles about racism are blocked, because they contain the word racism.

But this is the content people want to read. 

Starting media life as a press buyer, I used to fear my head of press’s wrath when my ad appeared outside of the front half, but now the industry seems obsessed with the ‘back half’.

An effective advertising environment that’s free from competition is about as clear an example of ‘Relative Advantage’ as you’re likely to find.

So, we developed a tool, ‘Relative Advantage: Unblocked’ (working with Double Verify and Ozone), to only buy ‘unsafe’ content across quality news sites for three of our clients and compared the results to a controlled ‘safe’ group. 

Firstly, we were able to access 800,000 articles that would have otherwise been blocked. The results showed uplifts in all metrics for the ‘unsafe’ group:

• Brand lift was 40% on ‘unsafe’ content rather than 18% on ‘safe’
• Action intent doubled from 6.2% to 13.8% on unsafe content
• Consideration tripled from 3% to 9%
• Brand preference jumped +44% from 5.2% to 7.5%

So, what does this all mean for planners and the industry as a whole?

My role as a planner and strategist is to advise my clients on the best solution for their problem. Today, a plan takes a village to put together and get signed off on, but it is ultimately the agency’s responsibility to come up with what they believe is the best plan.  

Fortunately, working at an independent, transparent agency means I am encouraged and have the freedom to do that. Of course, the client can decide not to take that advice or choose to be advised by others. 

But when it comes to news, the facts speak for themselves; quality news is safe and highly effective. 

News delivers scale, a quality environment, and a high level of attentiveness. And perhaps most importantly, quality news is an essential part of a functioning democracy; without it, the world is a bit of a scary place.

Jessica Treasure is head of strategy at Bountiful Cow