By Marc Zander, Chief Client Officer at Teads, on what advertisers need to prioritise
The recent shut down of GARM was certainly a blow to the world of digital advertising, given the past few years have been particularly challenging in this space. Advertisers, publishers, and consumers have been increasingly faced with the threat of disinformation, hate speech and “fake news”, impacted heavily by the rise of disruptive new technology (AI generated misinformation). The fallout of this resulted in severe implications – starting with misinformation during a global pandemic, US election campaigns and most recently the horrific riot activity in the UK.
However, there remain a number of organisations and third parties working together in the digital advertising space, including TAG, IAB, Newsguard, IAS and DoubleVerify, with a focus on ensuring responsible advertising. These organisations are leading a global initiative to fight fraudulent activity and increase trust in the digital advertising industry. Collaboration across organisations, advertisers and publishers is, and will continue to be, key to driving this.
More than ever before, it is important for brand marketers to think carefully about the legacy they’re leaving behind. They are the ones entrusted with a brands’ reputation, and ensuring consumers see that brand in the right context is a critical part of how that brand is perceived. More broadly, everyone in the media ecosystem is accountable for advertising responsibly, from brands to media agencies and media suppliers like Teads. From our perspective we look at responsible advertising in terms of four key pillars:
- Support for quality journalism
- Respect for brands and users
- Preventing a diversity and inclusion bias
- Fostering a sustainable digital ecosystem
So, where to start and what should advertisers prioritise? Following recent events, a focus on quality journalism and premium publishers is even more important and is the only way to ensure brand safety.
At Teads, we bring new advertisers (and revenue) to our publishers and our minimum revenue agreements provide stable and growing income, which is key to funding quality journalism. Teads has direct publisher integration and the best supply path optimisation (96%) as measured by Jounce media. This ensures maximum monetisation for our publishers and best results for our advertisers.
As with everything, you get the quality you pay for. Whilst advertising with quality publishers may entail a slightly higher cpm, it consistently delivers better brand and sales lift results and it is inherently more brand-safe than user generated content.
Respecting brands and users is where our technology and tools come in. Nobody likes being forced to watch an intrusive sticky ad, especially if it isn’t a very good one. So, delivering quality, non-forced, advertising is key to not only avoiding consumer dissatisfaction but also driving increased attention. We continue to innovate in terms of the tech that we use and use a vigorous vetting process to ensure we work with only the safest of publishers.
And Teads is committed to ‘good advertising’ so we provide a 100% MFA free guarantee* to our clients too.
Adhering to consumer data privacy legislation is also a key element of responsible advertising and the number of lawsuits over data privacy that are hitting the headlines these days signal that the industry still has work to do in this field. We use opt-in (rather than opt-out) ad experiences and developed the first cookieless platform using contextual rather than private consumer data to reach the right audience at the right time, in the right way.
The third pillar is about supporting diversity and inclusion, and this can be done in a number of different ways. At Teads we bring diverse publishers into our ecosystem and help them maximise the monetisation of their inventory, without compromising the benefits for brands. This could mean working with agency teams to regularly review blocklists and ensure they are consistent with brand values and driving reach for brands. It could also include supporting minority-owned publications or content supporting specific minorities, which some brands have historically included in their blocklists. Teads can help amplify the voice of under-represented minority groups and is constantly working to add progressive and minority owned publishers.
While the fourth pillar on sustainability is less relevant to the challenges we are outlining here, it is important that brands have a holistic understanding of their campaigns’ emissions across media, ad selection, creative distribution and device manufacturing, as well as electricity consumed while viewing ads. Teads has a great reputation for being best in class here, a position which is supported by Scope 3.
We all have a responsibility to be responsible advertisers. While the fallout of GARM is a blow, the issue highlights the importance of prioritising brand safety right now and its significance in today’s media landscape. There are simple solutions in the key areas of; supporting quality journalism, reducing your carbon footprint and delivering great content that respects the user, is engaging, diverse and inclusive, and best of all, drives better business results too.
* as measured by Jounce media
