Advertisers who block news content are missing opportunities to reach engaged, high-value audiences while inadvertently undermining the financial foundation of quality journalism.

“Advertisers are allergic to the news, oftentimes for the wrong reason,” said Michael Weaver, senior vice president of business development and growth at Al Jazeera Media Network during EMARKETER’s Reframing Brand Safety in News Environments event last week. “But it's so neglected as a category, it's easy for a brand to distinguish itself when it really leans into the news.”

News audiences deliver premium engagement metrics

One in four people in America consider themselves "news junkies," checking news six times daily and reading an average of seven articles per day, according to data from Stagwell and HarrisX.

“Ninety percent of CEOs and board directors consider themselves news junkies,” said Stephanie Paternik, vice president of insights at EMARKETER, citing the same research. “This audience [of news junkies] tends to be more educated, rank higher in their companies, and come from higher incomes.”

In addition, news junkies are not deterred by what advertisers may consider to be controversial topics.

Studies comparing brand engagement metrics on "hard news" topics like crime versus "soft news" like sports show no statistically significant difference in brand purchase intent. For example, among total US adults, brand purchase intent measured 63% for crime coverage versus 64% for sports coverage, found the Stagwell and HarrisX data.

"News junkies are a large audience, a valuable audience, and they are not deterred by what we might consider to be difficult content within the news that they're reading," Paternik said.

Block lists create unintended consequences

Many advertisers use crude keyword-based block lists that prevent ads from appearing alongside content containing specific words, regardless of context. This approach frequently backfires.

Time magazine's 2023 Taylor Swift cover story generated 89.2 million site visits, with readers spending an average of 10 minutes and 42 seconds on the article, per the publication. Yet many brands missed this high-traffic cultural moment because the word "feminist" appeared in the story and was on their block lists, said Mark Howard, COO of Time.

Extensive block lists cut off huge swaths of inventory that advertisers can use to optimize their campaigns, according to Josh Stinchcomb, global chief revenue officer at Dow Jones. It’s more important to consider the publisher environment.

"Maybe make less of a determination at the atomic article level, like is this a particular story that I feel comfortable being next to or not, and more is this an environment or a publisher I feel comfortable being in or not," he said. "Choose your partners carefully and then maximize the opportunity inside of them."

AI raises stakes for trusted content

More than half (51.7%) of English-language web articles worldwide are AI-generated, per Graphite analysis, raising the premium on verified journalism.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of AI-using Wall Street Journal readers would trust AI answers that include citations from reputable publishers, compared with just 12% who trust AI answers without citations, per the Wall Street Journal study.

The trust factor translates to purchase behavior. Some 67% of consumers have increased perception of a brand beside a trusted publisher citation, 84% are more likely to consider buying from that brand, and 75% are more likely to seek out lesser-known brands when endorsed by trusted publishers, per the WSJ study.

“We don't have an information distribution problem,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of The Committee to Protect Journalists. “We have a problem of identifying where to find trusted, reliable content.”

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