But enough about domestic U.S. politics -- for now --
ahead of this week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Stagwell has released a study indicating that the CEOs and board members of some of the world's biggest companies still believe in the
role and vitality of journalism.
Yes, in these blurry information times when the world's biggest digital information platforms are retrenching on fact-based information -- or at the very least, fact-checking what they distribute to billions of people worldwide -- Stagwell's HarrisX unit found the CEOs and board directors of more than 1,000 publicly traded companies in the U.S. and 13 other countries believe they should be backing news media outlets more, including with their ad spending.
In fact, 75% believe they should be advertising more to support news media, while only 7% believe they should spend less, according to findings of the study fielded December 30, 2024 to January 14, 2025.
advertisement
advertisement
Importantly, the corporate chieftains believe companies have disproportionately hurt the news industry by either avoiding advertising altogether, or by overly applying "brand safety" tools and protocols to news media outlets.
Specifically, Stagwell found:
57% think it is a mistake to apply brand safety across all news outlets and types of news content.
69% say brand safety protocols are over-applied to the point of hurting media outlets and advertisers.
75% of executives of large companies in particular believe brand safety has been over-applied.
Personally, I've always considered brand-safety sensitivity in news content to be a relative value judgment for businesses, and believe one of the greatest shifts in the way the ad industry applies it has been the move from old school "blacklists" excluding questionable content, to "inclusion lists" sanctioning the responsible kind.
But in this post-GARM (the World Federation of Advertisers' now defunct Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative), highly litigious (ie. Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's heavy-handed libel suits, etc.), and especially the regression of fact-checking on Meta's and other platforms, there has never been a better time for more open-minded advertising support for news media.
Kudos to Stagwell for fielding this research, more of which can be found here.
The push is especially noteworthy given that Jim Jordan's House Judiciary Committee already has opened a probe into Omnicom and Interpublic related to their merger, but citing the ad industry's support for responsible media.
Stay tuned for more on that, but you can read the letters sent to Omnicom's John Wren and Interpublic's Philippe Krakowsky yourself.