Commentary

How Will Fake News Affect Online Ad Budgets?

by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, June 1, 2017

Yahoo’s BrightRoll, a demand-side-platform company, wanted to better understand how the fake news problem factors into digital media buyers’ decision-making process. It surveyed more than 400 programmatic advertising decision-makers to get a handle on their feelings about this issue.

The survey found that 96% of advertisers are concerned about fake news in programmatic advertising. In addition, 31% of the decision-makers polled will reduce spend with programmatic partners whose inventory includes brands associated with fake news.

Forty-three percent said they won't change their spend, but will ask for fake news publishers to be blacklisted; 11% will maintain spending regardless; and 16% said they’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis.

To address their concerns, 55% of those polled said they will put more pressure on programmatic tech partners to proactively screen for fake news, 41% will attempt more granular site targeting, 35% will use a whitelist, and 27% will shift from an open exchange to some form of private buying. Meanwhile, 8% aren’t planning to take any action.

ad spending, dsp, fake news, programmatic, programmatic video

2 comments about "How Will Fake News Affect Online Ad Budgets?".

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Harold Walters from VISIT FLORIDA, June 1, 2017 at 4:18 p.m.
Can anyone specify the "brands associated with fake news"? Seems the list would be pretty deep.
Reply

Kirk Cheyfitz from Kirk Cheyfitz Consulting replied, June 5, 2017 at 4:17 p.m.

Good question. I, too, believe it ought to be a deep list. But I'm afraid no one will offer a list or a definition and that may be the problem. The definition of "fake news" is not exactly settled. Acording to the president, it includes The New York Times, CNN and, probably, the National Science Foundation, among many others. According to me, it excludes those folks but includes Breitbart, Palmer Report and all the other ultra-partisan sites that are not too picky about their facts. Google's definition appears to exclude any site that claims somewhere in 2-point type to be "satire." And so on.