By Patience Haggin
Last month Target Corp. told a leading online news publisher not
to run its ads in stories related to the Black Lives Matter
movement. Articles mentioning police-brutality victims such as
"Breonna Taylor" and " George Floyd" were off limits, as were those
with the word "protests."
Target and other advertisers that compiled similar "blocklists"
say they were respecting the sensitivity of the issue and wanted to
avoid the appearance of exploiting tragedies. News publishers say
such moves effectively punish media companies for covering
important issues, since they earn less money from content where
ad-blocking is prevalent.
Blocklists aren't new: Before this year, many brands already
were sidestepping articles with words like "shooting," "bomb,"
"immigration" or even "Trump," hoping to avoid associations with
controversial topics. The ad blocking went to a new level in 2020
-- first, as the terms "Covid-19" and "coronavirus" made it onto
many blocklists, and more recently with the addition of terms
related to the Black Lives Matter movement.
"It's defunding our journalism at a time when it's imperative
for us to be the front lines doing this kind of work," said Paul
Wallace, Vice Media's vice president for global revenue products
and services. Black Lives Matter coverage was Vice's most popular
news in June, yet commanded ad prices 57% lower than news about
other topics because so many brands are actively avoiding placing
ads in those articles, he said.
"The most frustrating part of all of this is that the brands
that are sending this stuff are standing on a pedestal saying that
they support BLM," he said.
A Target spokesman said the retailer's ad blocking "does not
discount the importance of reporting on topics like Black Lives
Matter or the murder of George Floyd. It's intended to acknowledge
that the person consuming that content may not be receptive to a
marketing message from a mass retailer like Target at that time."
The spokesman added, "Target stands with our Black team members,
guests and families."
Based in Minneapolis, where a white police officer's killing of
Mr. Floyd set off nationwide protests, Target was among the
companies most outspoken about the unrest. It promised aid to the
community and signed a letter promising to tackle institutional
racism. Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell said in May that the
company would remember victims of police brutality. "We say their
names," he said.
Target is among many brands that have temporarily paused ad
spending on Facebook Inc. after a public campaign by civil-rights
groups that say the tech giant isn't doing enough to rein in hate
speech on its platform.
MTV, the youth-oriented cable channel owned by ViacomCBS Inc.,
also avoided ad placements near articles about the protests and
unrest. It asked the same leading publisher to avoid placing its
ads in stories that mention words including "Breonna Taylor,"
"Ahmaud Aubery" [sic], "George Floyd," "Black Lives Matter,"
"protests," "racism," "hate" and "policing."
An MTV spokeswoman said the cable network believes the keyword
blocklist in question was for ads for the show "Revenge Prank."
"Due to the comedic nature of the show...we didn't want to be
insensitive by placing ads for it next to important and serious
topics, such as Black Lives Matter," she said. "This is standard
practice we use with our media agency to ensure that our ads don't
come across as tone-deaf or disrespectful."
Brands maintain keyword blocklists because they don't always buy
ads aimed at specific websites. Instead, in automated ad buying,
they often target certain kinds of audiences or types of content,
and middlemen direct their ads to sites that fit those
characteristics. The blocklists help middlemen and publishers weed
out certain ad placements.
When Covid-19 took over the news cycle in March, news
publishers' page views soared as readers flocked to those stories.
But ad prices plummeted as much as 50% compared with the year-ago
period, partly because of the keyword blocking by advertisers. The
pandemic led to a broader downturn in ad spending, which also
affected ad prices across the board.
Ad prices began climbing in May as brands grew more comfortable,
but then took a hit again in late May when Mr. Floyd's death and
the protests became the top news story. In the two weeks after Mr.
Floyd's May 25 death, ad prices on news content were on average 41%
lower than the same date a year earlier, according to Staq Inc.,
which aggregates data from more than 40 digital publications.
Prices slowly began to rebound as protests commanded less coverage.
Ad prices now are about 20% below where they were a year ago.
Some brands forgo the blocklist approach, instead using
technology that scores an article's overall sentiment, rather than
just detecting the presence of certain words. Avoiding certain
keywords can be too blunt, said Guy Tytunovich, chief executive of
Cheq AI Technologies Ltd., which helps brands avoid objectionable
content by scoring an article's sensitivity.
"It's bad enough being an elephant in a china store. It's much
worse when you're a huge elephant in a tiny, tiny china store,
which is the case in 2020, when so much of the news is negative,"
Mr. Tytunovich said.
He has advised clients to tolerate more risk than usual in 2020,
so their ads wind up on some news stories. But Cheq's technology
scores most Black Lives Matter-related content as too sensitive
even for advertisers with high risk thresholds, he said.
Research suggests brands needn't fear association with hard-news
topics. Consumers don't think negatively of brands when their ads
run adjacent to troubling news, according to a recent study by
Integral Ad Science, a firm that helps brands avoid unfavorable ad
placements.
"It's not like people are reading about Trump and they see a
Home Depot ad. And then they think, 'oh, I hate Trump, so now I
hate Home Depot,'" said one media executive.
Some companies paused ad campaigns because they weren't sure how
to contribute meaningfully to the national conversation about race,
ad industry executives said.
"A lot of advertisers tend to just pause during these moments
because they can't come up with the right message," said Staq Chief
Executive Andy Ellenthal.
Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 12, 2020 14:06 ET (18:06 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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