Digiday Research: Brand-safety concerns haven’t made it harder to monetize content

The publishers that think brand-safety concerns could harm their bottom lines are justified in their belief. Beyond pulling ads from sites like Breitbart, brands have gone so far as to refrain from advertising on mainstream publishers’ sites like Fox News.

For U.S. publishers, President Donald Trump — who is hard to avoid covering — poses a challenge. Although stories featuring Trump perform well in terms of pageviews, many advertisers shy away from Trump content. In fact, a prior Digiday study found that 76 percent of brand marketers attempt to avoid Trump entirely.

Brand-safety concerns have also affected European publishers. Most major U.K. newspapers had ads pulled from their sites after some brands found their ads running next to inappropriate videos on YouTube. While some advertisers just requested their ads not appear adjacent to stories referring to the scandal, this situation highlights the issues publishers may face.

Capitalizing on advertisers’ brand-safety concerns, some publishers view themselves as the solution to brand-safety issues. The New York Times pitched itself as brand-safe at last year’s NewFronts. Established publishers like the Times could benefit from advertisers cutting the number of sites their ads appear on. A study by Teads found that over half of CMOs plan to address brand-safety concerns by increasing ad spending on brand-safe sites.

Publishers have also made adjustments to try to mitigate advertisers’ brand-safety fears. U.K. publisher Ladbible, for example, started rating the maturity level of its content to help advertisers choose the content they want to advertise against. Vice, meanwhile, developed a tool in partnership with Grapeshot that lets brands avoid advertising next to certain words on Vice’s site.

European countries are working hard to stamp out fake news, which could help ease advertisers’ worries about allowing ads to appear next to politically charged content. Germany enacted laws that clamp down on companies that propagate fake news. European publishers, including the BBC, Bloomberg and Le Monde, also formed a coalition that attempts to debunk fake news.

Of course, ads aren’t the only way publishers can make money. Subscriptions are a steadily growing revenue stream for many publishers, including the Guardian, the Financial Times, The Spectator, and The New York Times.