These days most newspaper publishers are releasing their second quarter results. Results that overall see a recovery compared to the same period of 2020 but which in general are very far from the pre-pandemic ones, which in turn had, with rare exceptions, a negative trend compared to previous years. The pandemic has further highlighted the contradiction between large audiences for online news and falling revenues, but it seems that there are those who are thriving instead.
In fact, according to a new analysis by NewsGuard and Comscore, the disinformation industry is experiencing a particularly prosperous time. Disinformation publishers are estimated to earn $ 2.6 billion a year from programmatic advertising.
NewsGuard and Comscore used a sample of 7,500 sites whose traffic and advertising expenses are measured by Comscore, and the dataset of more than 6,500 news and information sites whose credibility is assessed by NewsGuard. The data was cross-referenced to arrive at an estimate of ad spend on sites deemed unreliable by NewsGuard. From this database, NewsGuard and Comscore estimated that 1.68% of programmatic advertising spending across the 7,500 sites in the sample went to sites that post misinformation.
Data that underscores how much disinformation on the web is unwittingly financed by even the largest advertisers: their ads appear on thousands of sites through programmatic advertising, an automated process that does not offer clear and complete information to brands about where exactly their advertisements appear and consequently on what kind of information they are funding.
A problem both for the information industry, which sees revenue stolen, and for advertisers, who, although attentive to “brand safety”, that is the set of measures that aim to protect the image and reputation of brands from negative or harmful influence of questionable or inappropriate content during online advertising, they risk associating the presence of their brands with more than questionable, inappropriate content.
The tools offered by traditional ad verification companies, created with the aim of protecting brands from placing ads on inappropriate sites, are efficient in using artificial intelligence to detect and block advertisements on pornographic, or promoting violence. and hate. These companies, on the other hand, are generally ineffective in recognizing disinformation, which often presents itself exactly as real news and which cannot be identified through the use of artificial intelligence alone.
Since disinformation has very low production costs, every dollar, or euro, spent on advertising that goes to disinformation sites contributes far more to the production of fake news than a dollar spent on advertising that goes to legitimate media contributes to the production of credible journalism.
This latest report comes after numerous other studies on the staggering magnitude with which advertisers inadvertently support misinformation through their advertising. According to a previous NewsGuard report, more than 4,000 top brands had placed advertisements on sites posting misinformation about COVID-19. According to another NewsGuard report, 1,668 top brands had placed advertisements on sites that posted election misinformation during the 2020 US presidential elections.
In Europe, according to Statista’s forecasts on the five main European markets, including Italy, in 2021, programmatic advertising investments will amount to 17.2 billion dollars. Calculating 1.68% of these means that hundreds of millions of euros will go to disinformation sites, damaging, in fact, the information industry and the advertisers themselves.
A possible solution to the problem is that companies, brands, institutions and organizations that invest in online advertising, in collaboration with the advertising agencies they use, and the related media centers for the purchase of space, enter the list of websites deemed untrustworthy by NewsGuard to keep their programmatic advertising away from these sites. A practice that, in addition to being the only truly effective tool to combat “fake news”, also proves to be advantageous for advertising investors. In fact, a recent case study highlights how this approach – building an inclusion list of trusted sites – leads to lower CPMs, wider reach, and a 143% higher click-through rate. Simply thanks to the extension of advertising on reputable news sites.
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