New Stagwell survey: EMEA executives want to advertise alongside news, but buyers fear backlash

Most company executives surveyed across Europe, the Middle East and Africa say that their companies should invest more in news advertising. But media buyers are hesitating because they fear controversial placements could trigger brand blowback.

That was a key insight for the heavy hitters gathered at Stagwell’s Future of News event in London last week, where top news publishers and journalists put on a charm offensive aimed at the advertisers in the room.

At the event, Stagwell released its latest study on executives’ attitudes toward ads on news. In the report, 73% of CEOs and board directors interviewed across EMEA said their company should advertise on news media “more.” Only 10% said “less.”

But that support doesn’t show up in the numbers — news outlets only get a sliver of ad budgets while the bulk flows to platforms like Google and Meta, which host news but don’t fund its production.

The publishers in the room blamed the conundrum on three factors: “blunt” tech tools, media buyers’ fears of backlash from placing ads next to hard news or controversial topics and the need for better education on journalism’s effectiveness as an advertising medium.

On the tech side, archaic keyword blocking practices can keep almost half of news content from monetization. “Football publishers have almost been hit the hardest with this stuff, because they’ve got words like ‘shoot’ and ‘attack.’ You think it’s just hard news being blocked, but no, it’s too blunt,” said Rob Bradley, SVP, digital revenue, strategy and operations, at CNN International Commercial.

While Stagwell’s research showed that most top executives agreed that advertising on news media was a good investment, that point of view did not trickle down to media buyers pulling the trigger on ad buys.

“The CEOs and the C-suites get this, but the research tells [us] that [at] an operational level, there’s still a gap. The buying level … needs to know that they’re going to be OK if they spend on news, and they’re not going to be punished,” Bradley said.

“Eight years ago, you wouldn’t have trouble putting CNN on a campaign. It kind of hurts suddenly being told, you’re going to block us, but you’re very happy to spend 80% of your budget on a platform where there’s less or no moderation,” Bradley added.

Publishers said it’s time to move on from the “moral” argument to fund the news and trumpet its business value instead.

“Often [advertisers are] looking for cheap, quick reach. They’re looking for the audience, not the context,” said Gideon Spanier, U.K. editor in chief at Campaign. “Good journalism takes time. It can take decades. … And marketers and brands, they want a return today. They want a return tomorrow. They’ve got the next quarter to think about.”

Henry Faure Walker, CEO of Newsquest Media Group, which owns several local news outlets in the U.K., pointed to a national campaign run last year for the NSPCC, the leading children’s charity in the country.

Walker said the campaign increased the propensity to donate to the NSPCC by 34%, while “brand warmth” increased by 52%. Smaller advertisers are seeing results, too, he said, because even though research may not be conducted for local ad campaigns due to their smaller scale, “they keep coming back, and they’re entrepreneurial businesses.”

In context

Stagwell isn’t the only media player working to stop the hemorrhaging of ad dollars from news publishers. Last week, several U.K. media owners and agencies announced The News Alliance, an industry coalition aimed at getting more advertisers to funnel ad budgets toward news.

In a statement, members including Sky Media, Havas Media Network and the7stars contrasted news’ inherently brand-safe, premium environment to the “dangerous or misleading” content that brands advertise against on social media platforms.

The continued push for more ad budgets in news comes as Google claimed that news content contributes almost “zero” to its ad revenue in a report released last week, as it battles a European copyright law that requires payment to news organizations for reusing their content.

The search giant conducted tests in eight European markets by removing news content for 1% of users. The test did, however, find that daily average users declined by 0.8%.