{"id":21933,"date":"2025-02-01T06:06:16","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T06:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21933"},"modified":"2025-02-01T06:06:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T06:06:18","slug":"metas-pullback-on-fact-checking-puts-brand-safety-back-in-the-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21933","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s pullback on fact-checking puts brand safety back in the spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Brand safety is dead. Long live brand safety.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Meta announced that it was ending its fact-checking program and lifting content restrictions on certain topics, all in the name of \u201cdiscourse.\u201d The company will instead rely on so-called Community Notes, similar to a feature on Elon Musk-owned X.<\/p>\n

More controversially, the company updated its hateful conduct policy to allow certain types of transphobic and xenophobic content, according to guidance from the company. As a result, it could only be a matter of time until Meta-owned platforms get more toxic.<\/p>\n

Casting aside any political calculus behind the decision, Meta\u2019s policy shift stands to put advertisers in an awkward spot. The industry has spent the last decade preaching the importance of brand safety, despite frequent reports that have raised serious questions about the technology\u2019s effectiveness (not to mention the economic effects it can have on the news business). In other words, if the world\u2019s second largest ad platform isn\u2019t worried about toxic content, why should the rest of the industry care?<\/p>\n

Ahead of any potential pushback, Meta executives have tried to tamp down concerns. At Davos in late January, Meta executive Nicola Mendelsohn said in a roundtable discussion with Business Insider that the company had been speaking to advertisers about brand-safety concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know how important it is for businesses to have transparency and control over their brand suitability, and we will continue to invest in this area,\u201d she also wrote on LinkedIn. In the past, Meta has made exceptions to its content moderation policies for its largest advertisers.<\/p>\n

Perhaps she could have saved her breath. Three agency execs told Marketing Brew that their clients aren\u2019t yet concerned about Meta\u2019s content moderation changes. In other words, it\u2019s business as usual.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe there\u2019s a general confidence that common sense will prevail, and I\u2019m sure that they will manage this very carefully,\u201d Justin Billingsley, global chief growth officer at the S4 agency Monks, told us. \u201cIt\u2019s not top of mind for clients that I\u2019m dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not seen large-scale change in the platform, we are still working with them as one of our largest global partners,\u201d Mike Bregman, chief activation officer at Havas Media, told Marketing Brew.<\/p>\n

When asked for comment, Meta spokesperson Kash Ayodele pointed Marketing Brew toward previous public comments from executives, including Mendelsohn\u2019s LinkedIn post.<\/p>\n

Safety dance<\/h2>\n

In recent years, brand safety has evolved from an industry concern into a political cudgel as right-wing activists have claimed that the practice censors conservative media.<\/p>\n

X owner Elon Musk, who faced his own advertising exodus after his takeover of the platform in 2022, has led some of the charge, describing industry guidance to pull back from the platform as an \u201cadvertising boycott racket.\u201d X later sued advertisers, including Unilever and Mars, as well as two industry groups, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), claiming that the groups violated antitrust laws by discouraging advertisers from running ads on the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis behavior is a stain on a great industry and cannot be allowed to continue,\u201d X CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote on X around the time of the lawsuit. GARM disbanded shortly afterward, citing its limited resources available to fight the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Five months later, Meta\u2019s rollback of policies that would have previously flagged or removed more controversial content is contributing to a new normal for advertisers who may have previously received more assurances about the kind of content appearing on the platforms they spend on.<\/p>\n

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Get marketing news you’ll actually want to read<\/h5>\n

Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cMarketers have resigned themselves to this world where you won\u2019t be able to do very much about brand safety or brand suitability,\u201d Brian Wieser, principal at Madison and Wall, told Marketing Brew. \u201cWherever you can, you still will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta works with several brand-safety partners, including the two leaders in the category, DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, but even they are facing their own existential crises as advertisers and publishers question the reliability of the technology. Officials from the Department of Justice and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service have asked advertisers about the effectiveness of both companies, spurred by a series of reports finding that neither company prevented advertisers from appearing alongside racist and sexually explicit content, Marketing Brew previously reported.<\/p>\n

Both DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science\u2019s stock prices have fallen over the past year. DoubleVerify\u2019s is 50% lower than this time last year, while Integral Ad Science\u2019s is 32% lower.<\/p>\n

Advertisers appear to be less enthusiastic about the tech as well. According to a recent Forrester survey, 59% of marketing executives said they don\u2019t think consumers care \u201cas much as they used to\u201d about brand safety. Another 53% said they were becoming \u201cless prudish\u201d about their approach to brand safety. These survey results led the firm to predict that in 2025, 10 \u201cinfluential global brands\u201d would drop DoubleVerify as an ad-tech partner.<\/p>\n

Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at Forrester, told Marketing Brew that the prediction was predicated on the fact that \u201cwhen we look at current brand-safety practices, they\u2019re frankly unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if there were no concerns about the technology\u2019s efficacy, there are other questions. Namely, do consumers even remember digital ad placements?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe archetypal brand-safety sales pitch is, \u2018You wouldn\u2019t want an ad for [an airline] showing up next to an article about airplane crashes, would you?\u2019\u201d Michael Bishop, a former employee of the now-defunct Oracle-owned brand-safety company Moat, told Marketing Brew. \u201cI have never seen a study that actually measured the impact of that\u2014and as far as I know, no such study exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zoom out:<\/strong> Some groups are calling for a boycott of Meta in the wake of its policy changes. In early January, GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told Axios that she hopes \u201cadvertisers stand up and walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n

But unlike X at the time of Musk\u2019s takeover, Meta has far more advertisers, including SMBs that have come to rely on its ad tools, making the platform more insulated from any kind of pullback. When brands including Coca-Cola, Dunkin\u2019, and Unilever boycotted Facebook in 2020, it barely made a dent in the company\u2019s bottom line. At the time, Facebook\u2019s top 100 spenders only made up about 16% of the company\u2019s quarterly revenue.<\/p>\n

Though another pullback may be unlikely, some media buyers told us they are on high alert.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have less confidence today than I had 30 days ago or a week ago,\u201d Joshua Lowock, president of media at Quant, told Marketing Brew. \u201cThe thing is, I don\u2019t have evidence to back up my lack of confidence yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brand safety is dead. Long live brand safety. Earlier this month, Meta announced that it was ending its fact-checking program and lifting content restrictions on certain topics, all in the name of \u201cdiscourse.\u201d The company will instead rely on so-called Community Notes, similar to a feature on Elon Musk-owned X. More controversially, the company updated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nMeta\u2019s pullback on fact-checking puts brand safety back in the spotlight | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Brand safety is dead. 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