Industry Initiative Seeks to Support News Efforts During Crisis Times

Amid the ongoing debate over whether or not news is brand safe for advertisers, efforts are afoot to make the case that, yes, advertising on news — especially during times of crisis — is definitely a good move for all parties.

Catherine Perloff writes in AdWeek about Brand4News.org, an industry initiative working to directly monetize news sites by providing “open-source resources that can be used by advertisers and their agencies to confidently continue investing in high quality journalism.” Brand4News does that by providing advertisers with banner templates and inclusion lists — in both English and Ukranian.

Brands can expect a positive response from consumers when they opt to underwrite quality information-gathering precisely when it’s needed most. As the Brand Safety Institute (BSI) reported in 2021, a MAGNA/Disney study showed “a 21 percent increase in brand favorability…and a 21 percent increase in purchase intent resulted from ads running ‘on a high-quality, trusted and well-respected news source.’”

Perloff writes that brands can embed the Brand4News templates directly into ad servers and show “that the advertiser is ‘supporting quality journalism.’” And the inclusion lists provide brands with lists of “reputable Ukranian and mainstream English language publications” with which they can feel safe advertising. The English-language inclusion list has been vetted by the Global Disinformation Index.

The motivation behind the initiative is spelled out in an introduction on the Brand4News site: “Publishers lose money exactly when they need it most to continue reporting on the crisis situation. Quality journalism saves lives.”

That sentiment echoes what Brand Safety Institute Advisory Board member A.J. Brown, Manager of Brand Safety and Monetization at Twitter, spelled out recently in a video interview. “My advice to BSOs for navigating times of crisis…is to be surgical," said Brown. "Surgery is done with a scalpel and not a hack saw. Hack saws in brand safety lead to news publishers being deprived of revenue during moments when they’re most needed.”

The vetted inclusion lists echo an initiative undertaken by the Local Media Consortium and its “Local News Inclusion List,” developed with the help of the Brand Safety Institute (BSI).

For more on how best to support news and your brand, check out the BSI’s Resource Library, list of safety and suitability frameworks, checklists, and best practice guides.