News publishers may have missed out on crucial Olympics-related advertising revenue because of outdated keyword blocklists.
The issue came to light when it became clear that Olympics-themed advertising has been impacted by blocklists that have included the word ‘Paris’ since 2015 when terror attacks took place in the French capital.
According to figures from news publisher Reach’s contextual advertising solution Mantis, seen by media industry focused publication Press Gazette, only 43% of Olympics content seen between the start of the games and 13 August was classified as ‘brand safe’.
Mantis managing director Fiona Salmon told Press Gazette that its “hard to pinpoint exactly how many brands are still utilising these blanket lists”, but called it “no small issue”.
The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has also previously warned against excessive keyword blocking, highlighting examples of blocked key words such as ‘Manchester’, ‘Ariana Grande’ (relating to the Manchester bombing), ‘London Bridge’ and ‘Charlottesville’.
It highlighted that while most of these words were once associated with a negative news cycle, leaving them on the list can lead to unnecessary blocks, as seen in the most recent Olympics coverage. For example, travel brands being blocked from advertising near a match report about a Manchester City game.
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Brand safety has become a key discussion point for advertisers, particularly in the wake of recent concern around Elon Musk’s X – with the platform’s decision to sue advertisers boycotting it over brand safety concerns and fear of being seen beside far right content in particular.
A recent report from Adalytics also highlighted a set of damning findings about content for brands including Disney, Ikea and Nestlé appearing next to pornographic and racist content, despite using brand safety tools.
In order to combat this unfair penalisation, Reach has joined forces with AI platform Illuma to launch a new tagging tool across news brands including The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and talkSport.
This allows the publisher to access content – for the Olympics or otherwise – that might have previously been wrongly labelled as unsafe for brands to advertise alongside.
NewsUK head of strategic development Charlie Celino said: “What’s important for us as a publisher is that the more nuanced understanding that Narr(ai)te offers means that we can open up large areas of content that might traditionally been wrongly labelled as brand unsafe.
“This enables advertisers to access more highly-engaged audiences via our trusted, quality journalism.”
