BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness has pledged more investment into fact-checking and transparency brand BBC Verify in an aim to attract more potential advertisers, announced during this year’s Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
The BBC, which is prohibited from running commercial content in the UK, is able to sell advertising space on its own platforms to license its content out to other broadcasters overseas.
The IAB event this year focuses on how advertisers can access international audiences by placing adverts alongside its News channel and its soon-to-be refreshed BBC website.
The talks provided a rare opportunity to see how the British broadcaster channel‘s current affairs output works as a commercial product.
Speaking to the audience, Turness addressed the broadcaster’s transparency tool, BBC Verify, which was introduced in May.
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“The BBC is the one brand that [audiences] will come to and trust beyond others, but it’s getting harder,” she said. “And what they say is: ‘If we know how it’s made, we can trust what it says. Pull back the curtain on your journalism, show us the workings, and we will be able to trust more.”
Mentioning that they didn’t expect it to become so popular so quickly, Turness added that BBC Verify is making a positive impact, and the broadcaster plans to invest more in it both locally and internationally.
When asked by BBC News chief presenter Lucy Hockings what this meant for advertisers, Turness said: “It’s about making sure that we’re matching our output to the needs of our audiences. Because if we match the needs of our audiences that will drive engagement, will become a more regular habit, they will engage more deeply with us [and] that will drive growth.”
Turness, who has in the past led commercial news operations ITN and NBC News International, again emphasised the importance of how growing the broadcaster’s journalism “drives commercial benefit, and that comes back in to fund more of or journalism”.
“That’s absolutely where we’re headed here, and that’s where we want to be. So we want to, together [with advertisers], really drive and build this growth and make sure that we are giving audiences what they expect,” she concluded.
The talk comes in the wake of the BBC announcing it is considering introducing an advertising model as it reviews alternative methods to replace its current funding model, the license fee.
