Advertisers increasingly avoiding hard news stories
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Advertisers are increasingly avoiding news content. Today’s abundance of hard news stories – from trade wars to armed conflicts – draw audiences but not ad dollars to content publishers and broadcasters, advertising consultancy WARC says in a trend report.
The report talks about a shift in ad spend from professionally produced content to user-generated and ‘creator-journalists’.
Key findings :
- Ad spend against news content is in decline across channels. WARC forecasts newsbrand ad spend to fall to $32.3bn this year – a 33.1% fall since 2019.
- Despite high audience interest, serious news stories are frequently unmonetised due to blunt keyword blocklists deployed by brands concerned by reputational risk.
- Globally, 51% of ad spend goes to professionally-produced content, down from 72% in 2019.
- Creator-journalists benefit from algorithms designed to keep users within digital platform ecosystems.
- Media agencies are introducing “quality CPM” measures in an effort to better reflect the effectiveness of campaigns placed against professionally produced journalism.
- “Brands have become increasingly squeamish about hard news content. Keyword blocking hinders the ability of publishers to monetise newsworthy moments, while ad investment is increasingly shifting from professional journalism to ‘creator-journalists’, says Alex Brownsell, Head of Content at WARC Media.
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