• by Joe Mandese , July 9, 2024

The bad news is that risky political media content and misinformation are growing very fast. The good news is they represent a minuscule portion of U.S. media content.

That's the conclusion of a new analysis released this morning by the brand protection experts at IAS, which found that only 1.03% of all impressions measured in the U.S. during the first quarter of this year were deemed "risky" political content (see above).

That is up 29% sequentially from the fourth quarter of 2023.

The study found the prevalence of misinformation is even lower in the U.S. advertising marketplace, representing only 0.005% of all impressions measured in the U.S. during the first quarter of this year.

And while that is up 25% from the third quarter of 2023, it is even more minuscule than the risky political content analyzed by IAS (see below).

Not surprisingly, the study concludes with a section analyzing the relative impact on ad performance and ROI when advertisers effectively avoid having their ads show up adjacent to risky political content and misinformation (see below).