Ad Fontes Media founder and CEO Vanessa Otero appeared on today’s episode of the AdExchanger Talks podcast to discuss the benefits of advertising in news, media literacy, the evolution of Twitter/X and more.

Podcast host Allison Schiff explained that advertisers and brands often restrict their support of the news or they avoid it completely because they’re afraid of a brand safety issue, but Otero says that this is not the right approach.

“It shouldn’t be a brand safety consideration in news, it should just be a brand suitability consideration,” Otero said. “Is it suitable for a brand to advertise around journalism that’s reliable and not intentionally polarizing? We think the answer is clearly yes, and we have information that shows and supports that.” 

Otero said it makes sense that brands may want to screen user-generated content like YouTube videos to avoid, for example, violent or sexually explicit content, but utilizing keyword blockers can be a problem when it comes to relevant news content.

“News talks about those things but isn’t those things. News is reporting, it’s bringing information about often unpleasant things, but it’s not … unpleasant to the reader,” Otero said. “It’s important to the reader. It’s informative to the reader.”

Otero said this “overzealous brand safety industry response” has led to a problematic loss of advertising revenue for news media. 

“Technology is what technology is, right? You can only do so many things to detect stuff at scale – to detect violence at scale, to detect hate speech at scale. You’re just looking for keywords,” she said. “These keywords block so much news content from getting advertised on.”

Otero encourages ad tech companies, brands and agencies to look at brand suitability through a lens of reliable journalism.

“We have data that shows that audiences in high-quality news vs. low-quality news have all the characteristics that advertisers across the board want, demographically,” Otero said. “We have data that shows that reliable news is not just brand safe, it’s actually brand safer.”

Otero noted that there’s going to be more attention on news with the upcoming election and other current events, like the war between Israel and Hamas.

“Do you want to keyword block all the news? Do you want to defund and not support, not advertise around news at this really critical time? We hope the answer is no,” she said.

Hear more about how Ad Fontes Media data can benefit advertisers in the podcast, which also discusses the importance of media literacy, the challenges of AI, whether Twitter/X is a viable option for advertisers, and why Otero avoids the term “misinformation.”

And to keep up with all of Vanessa’s media appearances, sign up for our free weekly email newsletter!