In an era where traditional news cycles are often considered sensitive, unpredictable, and polarising, certain concerns from advertisers often bubble back to the surface. These include the better management of ad placements, brand safety, and ring-fencing brand reputation.
However, using neuro-linguistic AI – among other propreitary technology and tools – global leaders within the news, opinion, and entertainment spaces have begun to communicate the effectiveness of ads that match appropriate content to specific target audiences by striking the right tone on preferred platforms, thus, alleviating advertiser concerns.
Campaign Middle East spoke to Rob Bradley, Senior Vice President – Digital Revenue, Strategy & Operations at CNN International Commercial (CNN IC) and Business Partner to WBD International Digital Revenue Strategy and Operations, about brand safety, measurement of ad effectiveness, platforms, future trends and much more.
“A Sentiment Analysis Moderator (SAM) assesses the sentiment and context of sentences across text, audio, video and galleries using neuro-linguistic AI, to cleverly determine when content is brand suitable.”
Discussing brand safety and brand suitability
On one hand, news channels offer high viewership, an informed and loyal community, credibility, and provide an opportunity for brands to reach large, engaged audiences. However, concerns around some content being contentious have led to questions around a brand’s advertisement appearing adjacent to such stories.
Bradley said, “I can understand why brand safety has been such a prominent subject. This is a fantastic industry which often moves quickly and adopts new technology however, there’s often a bluntness associated with brand safety and sometimes a laziness with off-the shelf tools and long blocklists that are infrequently updated which results in reduced campaign effectiveness.”
“Brand suitability is a term that I prefer as CNN is a premium, brand safe environment by default and, alongside the ‘hard’ and breaking news we’ve got great sectors like style, travel, business, tech and sport. To address brand concerns, we were innovative in developing our own suite of sophisticated tools including a Sentiment Analysis Moderator (SAM) which assesses the sentiment and context of sentences across text, audio, video and galleries using neuro-linguistic AI, to cleverly determine when content is brand suitable. This ensures advertising is adjacent to the most appropriate content and avoids appearing alongside anything that might not strike the right tone,” he added.
Using this alongside other proprietary technology and IAB taxonomy, CNN has been able to move away from broad blocklists and positively target and actively match brands with content that reflects their values and that will resonate with their target audience.
Responding to the results and impact of these strategies, Bradley explained, “We’ve been able to increase the impact of campaigns and significantly increase the availability of digital inventory available for our advertising partners.”
Recent research by Stagwell has found that ads placed adjacent to news topics such as politics, inflation and crime perform as effectively as those placed next to business, entertainment and sports stories.
When asked what the impact would be if brands choose not to advertise alongside the news, Bradley responded, “If brands choose to avoid advertising around news this does contribute to defunding quality journalism in a world where truth and facts are under threat. Brands are also missing out some of the most highly sought and hardly won audiences who are very engaged in news and want to be well informed on world events and current affairs.”
“Supporting essential journalism not only benefits society, but also drives significant business growth [for brands].”
‘Embracing the disruption’ of how content is consumed
The way we all consume any sort of content, whether it be entertainment, films and news online has changed dramatically, and it’s no different for how different generations across the Middle East are consuming news on their preferred platforms.
“The reason why CNN and some of the legacy brands are still prevalent is because they constantly embrace the disruption and evolve in line with audiences. Key to this is protecting the core business, investing in it and utilising your own data and insights to target audiences on your owned and operated properties,” Bradley explained.
He added, “Different demographics have their preferred platforms: younger audiences may enjoy shorter formats or documentary style reporting and when we’re on the move we may favour listening. And so we’re reaching audiences in a variety of ways so that people can find us on TV, streaming, FAST, audio, podcasts, digital and social.”
Diversification is important, but it’s also become equally essential for brands and advertisers not to be solely reliant on other platforms and beholden to someone else’s business model.
“In the industry we’ve sadly seen time and time again the challenges that some companies faced when they’ve relied purely on social for their audiences and monetisation models,” Bradley added.
This has only increased the pressure on CMOs to address the challenge on proving the effectiveness of campaigns amidst tight budgets and constantly evolving consumer behaviour.
To measure the impact of news content on advertising effectiveness, Bradley shared, “CNN addresses this by focusing on three key pillars: capturing audience attention, connecting with audiences to shift brand perception, and driving engagement that leads to memory and business growth. We employ extensive audience insights, global surveys, digital analytics, social listening, emotional measurement, and first-party data.”
“Studies, such as those from Stagwell, Teads and others, validate our ad effectiveness, demonstrating how supporting essential journalism not only benefits society, but also drives significant business growth.”
Trends, challenges, and opportunities
What are some of the most significant trends you’re seeing in digital advertising within the media industry? we asked Bradley.
He answered, “One of the positive trends is that brands are striving to have an impact or purpose, beyond just generating profits for their shareholders, that could be in sustainability or DE&I. Authenticity is key here and their actions have to be backed up with data and facts as consumers are demanding transparency.”
“Brands promoting what they stand for should be embraced. News platforms have a unique position to tell brand stories to the world as we have a responsibility to our audiences to be truthful in all our content across our journalism, sponsored and branded content,” Bradley added.
Having said this, he went on to explain that the relationships between media companies and advertisers in the coming years is only “going to get tighter”.
“If you can build a relationship with brands directly, or alongside an agency, you’re more likely to develop a deep understanding of their specific aims and be a better consultative partner with transparency around data, what’s working, what’s not, how to adapt etc. This leads to a strong feedback exchange which can transform campaign performance, creates trust and increases longevity and scale for the partnership,” Bradley concluded.
