IPG Mediabrands Rating TV News Buys Based On Misinformation, Will Use In Upfront

IPG Mediabrands this morning announced a deal with fake news and misinformation ratings service NewsGuard that expands its relationship to include broadcast and cable news programming and TV networks.

The new service, which is “exclusive” to IPG Mediabrands agencies and clients, enables them to assess good and bad TV news actors before they make media buys, and it will be in place in time for the 2021-22 upfront TV ad-buying season.

“In this age of misinformation and disinformation, one of the most important things we can offer our clients is greater assurances that their media dollars are not supporting misleading content,” Dani Benowitz, U.S. president of IPG Mediabrands investment unit Magna, said in a statement explaining the new deal. “NewsGuard is rapidly earning trust among viewers as an unbiased evaluator of news networks and sites. We are excited to be supporting NewsGuard as it goes one step further and rates the programs themselves.”

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IPG Mediabrands already was among the big agencies utilizing NewsGuard to rate and create “inclusion” and “exclusion” lists for buying or not buying news and information sites on the web based on the veracity of the information they publish.

NewsGuard said the new service will provide information veracity rankings on 117 shows on 27 networks and will launch in spring 2022.

The companies also disclosed that under their current agreement, Mediabrands clients receive “discounted rates” for using NewsGuard’s data.

While the announcement did not release any preliminary data on the rankings of various TV news and information outlets, NewsGuard did note that the service will recognize “that some programs on cable news, for example, are more journalistically vetted than others, the program-by-program ratings will give advertisers more options to consider.”

5 comments about "IPG Mediabrands Rating TV News Buys Based On Misinformation, Will Use In Upfront".
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  1. Eric Fischer from HJA Strategic Consulting, December 2, 2021 at 4:55 p.m.

    Wow, what a horrendous idea.  Who's overseeing the people at NewsGuard and are we to assume those people are without bias?  

  2. Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., December 2, 2021 at 5:09 p.m.

    @Eric Fischer:

    https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/team/

    https://www.newsguardtech.com/our-advisory-board/

    https://www.newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/

  3. Eric Fischer from HJA Strategic Consulting, December 3, 2021 at 12:26 p.m.

    Question was more philosophical than the links to the actual people.  Are we to say these people are without personal bias?  If so, they would be the first.

  4. Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., December 3, 2021 at 3:05 p.m.

    @Eric Fischer: Agree that people have biases, but why is that necessarily a bad thing when you're assessing the veracity of content people are exposed to? There are some automated machine-powered "brand safety" tools used by advertisers and agencies, but they often are blunt instruments filtering keywords and semantics of content. That's not necessarily a bad thing but there's a strong argument to be made that rating content intended for humans should be rated by humans. Historically -- going back pre-digital to the days of analog TV, print and out-of-home media -- advertisers and agencies mostly utilized human-powered screening services.

    The important thing is that the humans powering them have the proper criteria, methods and processes for doing it scientifically, and not 100% subjectively. And that they are transparent.

    One of the links I provided in my previous reply outlines the explicit process NewsGuard uses to do that.

  5. Eric Fischer from HJA Strategic Consulting, December 3, 2021 at 3:48 p.m.

    Would press you that there's never a strong argument to be made for rating news content in any way, shape or form.  Consumption of news content needs to be made by individuals only.  Sure they bring their biases to their assessment, but will always err on the side of people making up their own minds and being wrong or right, than have them view it through a 3rd party filter.

    My issue is less with advertisers and agencies, unfortunately it's no surprise they would employ a CYA tools such as this.  It's more that such a service such as NewsGuard exists as a business model.

    Realize our thread about the utility of the platform is tangential to the intent of your article, which was that IPG was employing it, but always enjoy a good, robust 1st amendment discussion -- we need more of them.  Have a great wknd Joe.

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