Advertising Alongside News Is Brand Safe Even in Times of War

For years, marketers have grappled with how to approach news environments—especially during crises, conflict, or breaking events. Industry frameworks that couched breaking news as inherently risky contributed to a paradigm in which news is often completely excluded from campaigns. The instinct to avoid breaking news is understandable: headlines about war, disaster, or political upheaval may feel like the wrong backdrop for a given brand's message. But that instinct is increasingly out of step with reality. A growing body of research shows that not only is advertising alongside news content brand safe, it is often more effective than many environments marketers consider “safer.”

You can follow the emerging consensus at BSI's "Breaking News: is it Brand Safe?".

The core misunderstanding starts with how we define and operationalize risk. Much of the industry still relies on blunt tools like keyword blocking, which flag content based on the presence of certain words—“war,” “violence,” “attack”—without understanding context. This approach treats a verified news report about a geopolitical event the same as harmful or sensational content elsewhere on the web. In doing so, it collapses important distinctions between reporting on a difficult subject and promoting harmful material.

Professional journalism operates within editorial standards, legal oversight, and reputational accountability. Established news organizations have strong incentives to maintain trust, accuracy, and advertiser relationships, and their content is subject to far greater scrutiny than most of the open web. The result is that, as Stagwell research has shown, "It is safe for brands to advertise adjacent to quality news content, regardless of topic."

What’s more surprising to many marketers is that news doesn’t just pass safety thresholds, it performs exceptionally well. According to DoubleVerify’s study, “Advertising in News Outperforms Other Environments, Marketers Say”, campaigns running in news environments drive higher engagement and attention than those in non-news contexts. This reflects the mindset of the audience. People don’t passively scroll through news the way they might through social feeds or low-quality sites. They are actively seeking information, paying attention, and engaging with content they trust. 

The real risk, paradoxically, may lie in avoiding news altogether. When advertisers exclude large swaths of news inventory, programmatic systems don’t pause spending—they redirect it. Often, that means shifting budgets into lower-quality environments such as “made-for-advertising” (MFA) sites, which are designed primarily to capture ad dollars rather than deliver value to users. These sites can lack transparency, editorial standards, and meaningful engagement.

Ultimately, the belief that advertising in news is inherently unsafe is less a reflection of reality and more a legacy of outdated tools and assumptions. The evidence points in the opposite direction. News environments are highly controlled, widely trusted, and demonstrably effective. Avoiding them doesn’t eliminate risk; it simply redistributes it into less desirable places. In a media landscape where attention is scarce and trust is valuable, news offers both. Brands that recognize this, and approach it with nuance rather than fear, stand to gain the most.