The mounting case against blocklists

On a panel at The Future of Media Manchester a few weeks ago, members from Stagwell agencies HarrisX and Goodstuff took the stage to unpack new research which found that advertising adjacent to quality news is brand safe — even against "hard news" subjects like war and politics.

The research undermined common concerns that advertisers express about not wanting their ads to be placed next to hard news content, which they often, wrongly it seems, deem brand unsafe.

Since then, there has been an additional study by Teads and Lumen which came to a similar conclusion.

The panel session was hosted by Ozone’s client services director Emma Cranston, and featured Alex Chizhik, chief commercial officer at HarrisX, and Paul Gayfer, planning partner at Goodstuff Communications.

“We need to recognise that blocklists are a very blunt tool," said Gayfer.

Chizhik added: “I’m hoping brands see that limiting their spend, limiting advertising based on the different stories folks can run, just leads us down a really bad path from a citizenship perspective, from a humanitarian perspective, and frankly from a business perspective.”

Highlights:

2:38: Summary of Stagwell's findings

7:09: Initial reaction from advertisers and publishers

8:56: Why are brands using keyword blocklists?

10:13: The halo effect of trust and premium inventory

14:45: Hope for change

Related articles:

Advertising adjacent to quality news content is brand-safe regardless of topic

Lessons from Manchester: Media’s industrial revolution needs you

Half of Reach’s Euro 2024 coverage wrongly identified by brands as unsafe

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