Defunding the news

How brand safety made reporting unprofitable

A song to read by: “Kid Charlemagne,” by Steely Dan

What I’m reading: “The Rachel Papers,” by Martin Amis

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The week that was

This last week was a short one, as I was visiting Washington D.C. with my parents through Wednesday, though I did still manage to publish two stories.

In the meantime, I missed out on what I heard were two very good parties — one a welcome for Katie Drummond, the new top editor at Wired, and another for Byline, the buzzy offshoot of the erstwhile Drunken Canal.

Still, I made it back to the city just in town for Halloween weekend, the best time of the entire year to ride the subway. I dressed as the fisherman mascot of Gorton’s Seafood, a truly terrible costume but the best I could with the little time I gave myself to scrounge something together.

On my mind

The story I published on Monday examines an important issue that, for a variety of reasons, far too few people know about.

In a nutshell, news publishers rely heavily on advertising to make money, but as a rule of thumb, advertisers are skittish about promoting their products alongside unpleasant news content. As a result, the relationship between the two parties is precarious, to say the least.

And when truly catastrophic, negative news occurs, advertisers will often use a set of filters, known variously as brand safety or brand suitability measures, to prevent their ad campaigns from running alongside that content. 

Advertisers employ a variety of tools to carry out this process, but one of the most common instruments is a keyword blocklist, which is exactly what it sounds like. Brands compile lists of words, and when an article is published containing one of them, ads from that brand will not (at least in theory) run against it.

These blocklists contain broad terms, like “war,” “disease,” “death” and “abortion,” as well as topical, specific terms, such as “Covid-19,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Ukraine” and, now, “Israel,” “Hamas,” “Gaza” and other related items.

This process has the intended effect of preventing brands’ ads from running alongside polarizing content, but it also has the unintended effect of demonetizing news publishers’ coverage of these news cycles.

When advertisers remove ads from coverage of critical events, such as the Israel-Hamas conflict, news publishers have to fill those ad spaces (called inventory) with digital ads off the open-exchange, which are poorer quality and less lucrative than ads sold directly or through curated deals, such as private marketplaces or programmatic guarantees. 

The result is that news publishers’ most critical reporting, which is also often their most expensive to produce, is inefficiently monetized. And while they can, to a degree, make up for this decrease in price with higher volume, as readers flock to stay current on whatever issue is at hand, the margins are poor and there is a significant opportunity cost. 

The resulting dynamic makes it unsustainable for news organizations to cover these kinds of stories, widening the chasm between the haves and the have-nots in news media. Only those that can subsidize polarizing reporting with ad revenues from other sections can afford to cover these stories.

Crucially, news publishers do not go around vocalizing this issue, as it understandably comes off as insensitive. People are dying in Gaza and the poor newspaper is having trouble turning a profit? The optics alone make it a challenging issue to remedy.

But the issue is really one of sustainability. If publishers cannot reliably produce critical reporting because advertisers shy away from it, those stories will not be told. Or at the very least, fewer of them will be told. It might seem crass to focus on the finances behind the news, but few companies stay in business by producing a product at a deficit. 

When my editor and I discussed this story, I hesitated to write it at first, mostly because it was somewhat old hat. Just in the last few years, I have seen this happen with Covid, BLM protests, Ukraine and now Israel-Hamas. There are some organizations working to improve this broken model — notably Ad Fontes Media — but for the most part it seems to be rinse and repeat. New crisis? Throw it on the blocklist.

But then she reminded me, obviously, that you report on issues like this in the hopes of spurring change, even if there is little evidence of that happening. Then that night, I had a conversation with a news junkie friend and told him about blocklisting, and he had no clue this dynamic was at play. 

The two conversations made me realize that the vast majority of people have no clue that news publishers’ most critical reporting is often their least sustainable, and that there should be more scrutiny toward a system whose logic is so fundamentally backward. 

It is a challenging issue, because I never want to exhort advertisers to run campaigns solely to “support journalism.” While noble, such reasoning carries little water in a for-profit arena. And while I have never seen evidence that running ads alongside polarizing news negatively impacts consumer perception of the brand, I can understand why a brand might choose to err on the side of caution. Why risk it?

As readers, we can help by supporting brands that advertise against divisive news content — the next time a Best Buy ad runs alongside a story about Israel-Hamas, click it! It is also further reason to subscribe to news publishers whose reporting you value, as your money is (at least in theory) more reliable.

But I would curious to hear your thoughts: What could reasonably change to improve this system?

Published this week

— The brand safety story. Another fun fact: For publishers without open-exchange demand to backfill the unfilled inventory, most resort to house ads, i.e. promotions of their subscription product, podcast, event, etc. While that is better than nothing, it means that for publishers like Bloomberg, which famously cut off its open-exchange demand to improve the user experience for readers, they get doubly penalized. No good deed goes unpunished!

— Remember when I said Complex would be sold by the end of the year? On Friday I reported that the deal is all but done — the live-shopping platform NTWRK is going to acquire Complex, sans Hot Ones and First We Feast, for around $140 million. Universal Music is likely going to join as a strategic investor, as its editorial portfolio, called WMX, will benefit from the musically inclined readership of Complex and subsidiary titles like Pigeons and Planes. 

One good rumor

Speaking of Complex, I heard that BuzzFeed is shopping around Hot Ones and First We Feast. I heard Vox Media might be on the short list of potential buyers, but I would happily welcome any additional info.

And speaking of rumored sales pitches, Axios reported a week ago that G/O Media has hung a For Sale sign on Jezebel. But I heard last week (from a stalwart Medialyte reader, no less) that G/O reached out to at least one former Jezebel editor in chief to gauge her interest in buying it. Given that none of the former Jezebel editors are acquire-a-media-company rich, I guess the price is reasonable?

Some good readin’

— Do you ever return things that you bought online? Do you know that the vast majority of those returns are never resold, and that the vast invisible supply chain of returns is a sustainability nightmare? I get obsessed with this article every month like clockwork. (The New Yorker)

— David Chang announced Momofuku Ko is closing next week, marking the end of an era. It was a dream of mine to eat there and I never got the chance. Sad! (Bon Appetit)

— The Dimes Square discourse has quieted in recent months. Maybe this will help? (New York Magazine)

Cover image: "Girl Reading,” Pablo Picasso