We are at a tipping point. A critical mass of leaders in the industry has now coalesced around actually getting ad dollars back into quality news, not just talking about it.

On Wednesday night, Stagwell hosted the first Future of News event for the launch of its study — the first of its kind — examining if brand safety risks actually exist in news.

The findings are clear: Despite broad misconceptions to the contrary, there are no adverse effects to brands when running ads next to high-quality, yet serious, “negative” news stories, even about crime, war, inflation, immigration, or politics. There was no substantial difference between purchase intent, brand favorability, or other brand metrics across any cut of demographics when comparing ads in these articles to ads in articles considered more “positive” and “brand safe,” like business, entertainment, and sports.

Over 200 industry leaders gathered from each part of the media and advertising industry — journalists and publishers, ad tech and data partners, agencies and brands — because we all know that advertising in news has almost no risk and almost all upside.

But up to this point, anecdote-based fear, rather than data, has caused brands and agencies to believe that news is risky to their brands. This is the first study squarely on this issue and it shows that the opposite is true.

I’m grateful to Stagwell’s leadership, especially Mark Penn and Alexis Williams, for the vision and execution of this study, which is a key piece to the puzzle of getting advertisers back to news: showing the lack of risk.

On the event’s panels, we heard about each of the other reasons to advertise in news: Journalists Hannah Beckler (Business Insider), who reported on the violent use of dogs on prisoners, spurring legislative change; Josh Gerstein (Politico), who broke the leaked Dobbs decision; Megan Twohey (New York Times), who reported the Harvey Weinstein sexual assaults; Jason Rezaian (Washington Post), who was captured and held in Iran for a year and a half a decade ago; and Wall Street Journal attorney Jason Conti, who is working to secure detained WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. Stagwell’s Vice Chair Ray Day, APR moderated, asking questions that elicited the most important part of why advertisers should support news — because our whole democratic society benefits from it.

Ad Fontes Media CSO Lou Paskalis moderated the panel of business and tech leaders. General Motors’ Shenan Reed recounted examples of working directly with news publishers over the years to achieve business objectives. U.S. Steel’s Tara Carraro talked about how both local and national news advertising has been key to driving huge improvements in brand perception. Code and Theory CEO Dan Gardner discussed how his publishers’ modern tech stacks have evolved. The Trade Desk’s Will Doherty highlighted that news is the number one source of original content and how TTD is making it easier to do the right thing.

I’m proud to have played a small role in consulting with Stagwell on the study approach. Much more progress to come.

Vanessa Otero is a former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado, area with a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. She is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart (October 2016), and founded Ad Fontes Media in February of 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart — the need for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, and for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves. Vanessa regularly speaks on the topic of media bias and polarization to a variety of audiences.