Statement of Robert Thomson, Chief Executive of News Corp On Havas Media Group UK Decision To Pull Advertising From Google & ...
March 17 2017 - 3:28PM
Business Wire
News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson has responded to news
of the Havas Media Group UK withdrawing advertising from Google and
YouTube by noting that advertisers “need to go back to basics to
protect their brands from serious damage.”
"Ad fraud is being perpetrated ad nauseam. It is rife throughout
the digital world, and is facilitated by some ad agencies, which
themselves make money from artificial audiences and pretend page
views,” said Mr. Thomson. “Advertisers need to go back to basics to
protect their brands from serious damage and to protect themselves
from being involved in potentially criminal activity, whether it be
supporting extremist groups or funding hardcore pornography."
Mr. Thomson has been a longtime evangelist for the view that
large tech platforms are “platforms for piracy” and fail to respect
the fact that “there is a hierarchy of journalism.”
Excerpts of past remarks by Mr. Thomson:
Morgan Stanley Technology, Media &
Telecom Conference, March 1, 2017
“Well, provenance is profoundly important and it’s becoming
increasingly important to advertisers. Because you've seen the
articles of late, The Times of London, they did a brilliant series
on companies like Land Rover pulling out of digital and social
because it is concerned about their ad placement on completely
unacceptable sites....”
News Corp Earnings, February 9,
2017
“…We are in an era in which integrity is priceless, yet digital
distributors have long been a platform for the fake, the faux and
the fallacious, highlighting an issue which we have long stressed –
that they have eroded the integrity of content by undermining its
provenance. Put simply, content distributors are profiting at the
expense of content creators and at the expense of veracity.
….And in the ad market, there has been an awakening, and there
will surely be a reckoning.
Advertisers want reassurance that their products are displayed
in suitable surroundings – they don’t want muddled metrics and they
don’t want digital platforms and ad agencies arbitraging
ambiguity.
The dangers of Chief Marketing Officers chasing fashion rather
than function was highlighted in The Times of London today – some
of the world’s best-known, most prestigious brands are
inadvertently funding extremists and hardcore pornographers.
We are confident that our premium platforms and our great
journalism will ultimately be beneficiaries of this reckoning.
…We are also testing our own digital ad network, which will
provide a measurable, high quality audience for advertisers, who
are increasingly wary, and rightly so, about the murky, tenebrous
world of digital advertising…”
UBS Global Media & Communications
Conference, December 6, 2016
“…ad agencies should also be responsible for the audiences that
they're creating, and then what they're serving those audiences and
how they're serving those clients, because we've sort of gone from
the era of Mad Men to mad metrics….
You would like to think now that this debate over fake, over
fallacious, over faux, over fraudulent, will lead to advertisers,
in particular, ad agencies and others, reassessing the value of
different platforms because, I mean, the ad market is dysfunctional
at the moment.”
DLD Conference, January 18,
2016
“If we are to be a well-informed society, you have to respect
the provenance of intellectual property….There is a hierarchy of
journalism….that is not reflected in Google and others that tend to
think quantitatively. Are we a quantitative society or are we a
qualitative society?....It is a dominant platform. Does it have
responsibility as a dominant platform? Yes…”
About News Corp
News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) is a global,
diversified media and information services company focused on
creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content to
consumers throughout the world. The company comprises businesses
across a range of media, including: news and information services,
book publishing, digital real estate services, and cable network
programming and pay-TV distribution in Australia. Headquartered in
New York, the activities of News Corp are conducted primarily in
the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. More
information: http://www.newscorp.com.
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News Corp Corporate CommunicationsJim Kennedy,
212-416-4064jkennedy@newscorp.comorNews Corp Investor
RelationsMichael Florin, 212-416-3363mflorin@newscorp.com
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