Teachers aren’t the only ones going back to school: each fall advertisers must decide what goes on the “learning agenda” for the coming year. This is the part of their ad budgets used to test new tactics that could drive future enterprise growth. The purpose here is learning, but the challenge is to decide which of your many great ideas to prioritize. We have a suggestion for that.

Let’s talk about the news. 

With the 2024 campaign already under way, audiences will flock to the news to understand the issues in front of them. It’s been more than a decade since most brands invested seriously in news. Some have been gone so long, they don’t even know how to come back. What’s your policy on advertising in quality news journalism? When’s the last time you interrogated it? Does it reflect the values of your enterprise or are you over rotating out of an abundance of caution? 

That’s why now’s the time to put news on your learning agenda for 2024. For brands, the learning agenda is the critical part of the media planning process that invests in innovation. It’s time to see if those fears that have kept you from supporting journalism are valid. It’s also time to see how much business value exists in advertising delivered in highly reliable, minimally biased news. Hint: Your largely unfounded fears may be leaving significant growth on the table.

Read more from Ad Fontes Media Chief Strategy Officer Lou Paskalis at Campaign US.

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Lou Paskalis is Chief Strategy Officer of Ad Fontes Media, a Public Benefit company that is dedicated to restoring advertisers’ investments in reaching audiences in quality news journalism with a unique technology that allows them to measure, mitigate and monitor bias and reliability in a manner consistent with their values and principles. Previously, he was President and COO of MMA Global, a trade association focused on architecting the future of marketing. In that role, he was responsible for driving innovation and change across a broad portfolio of functional areas, initiatives and forward-looking activities centered on shaping the future of marketing. He has three decades of client-side leadership experience, having led Global Communications Planning, Media Investment, Marketing Data Strategy and Brand Safety and Suitability at Bank of America; Media, Content and Mobile Marketing at American Express and many related roles at E. & J. Gallo prior to that. He is well- known as an outspoken champion for marketing innovation, governance and the advancement of the art and science of marketing as well as a strong advocate for journalism and marketers’ unique responsibility to support news organizations in their valiant efforts to defend truth.