Data-Labor-Technology

The specific changes companies are asking of Facebook differ from advertiser to advertiser — as does their degree of specificity. Some companies, like Unilever and Mars, have extended their advertising suspensions to other social platforms like Twitter and Snapchat. By not specifying their boycotts will only take place in the month of July, those companies also have distanced themselves from the perception that they were compelled by a protest campaign to make changes to their advertising outlay—an untethering that means they can make their own, private demands. The boycott presents an added layer of complexity for multinational companies: Try convincing your country manager in Spain to cut all their social media spending, while also having no plans to simultaneously reduce their sales targets. Unilever’s pause, for example, only covers advertising in the U.S.

Any marketer that’s made the decision to potentially forego revenue and vocally announce a Facebook ad suspension now faces a second dilemma: When will the conditions be right to return?

On July 1, Facebook published a blog post laying out the work it is doing to address the “recommended next steps” the Stop Hate For Profit campaign has suggested for it to stem the flow of hate-speech and disinformation being circulated on the platform. Facebook said it is looking at ways it can give moderators of its groups better tools, it’s exploring ways to connect victims of harassment with “additional resources,” and it’s committed to a brand safety audit by the Media Rating Council, among other moves.

To say the organizers of the movement weren’t satisfied with Facebook’s response would be an understatement. 

“This is simply a tired retread of the same talking points Facebook has been using for months to respond to concerns about hate and harassment on their platforms. We aren’t buying it, and neither are advertisers,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement. “The fact is, Facebook still has a serious problem with hate and harassment on their platform and is not taking it seriously enough.”

For example, Facebook said in its blog post that refunds are issued to advertisers whose ads ran in videos or Instant Articles that violated its network policies. An ADL spokesperson said Facebook requires advertisers to specifically request refunds. Instead, the spokesperson said, advertisers should be immediately notified when their ads appeared next to a post or group that was removed and their money should be refunded by default. Elsewhere, Digiday alum Sahil Patel reported for the WSJ that civil rights groups want someone with civil rights expertise in Facebook’s c-suite.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are set to meet with the leaders of the #StopHateForProfit campaign on Tuesday this week. It’s likely the coalition will press Facebook for more concrete commitments.

“Actions speak louder than words. It’s a cliché but it’s true — especially with Facebook,” said Jon Lloyd, interim director of campaigns at Mozilla Foundation, a Stop Hate For Profit partner. Specifically, Mozilla wants to see Facebook update its algorithms to stop recommending users join groups that are dedicated to hate-speech and dangerous conspiracies.

“What’s missing is recognition of the fact that Facebook itself, through a mix of content amplification and allowing microtargeting … is positively contributing to the problem,” added Lloyd. “It’s not just that hate content exists [but that it is] being actively promoted by Facebook as a platform.”

Therein lies the rub. The effectiveness of Facebook’s targeting and huge reach are exactly what made the platform so attractive to advertisers in the first place. 

Over the past couple of weeks in its efforts to quell the advertiser disquiet, Facebook executives have repeated a stat that 89% of hate-speech is removed from the platform before anyone reports it to the company — up from 23% three years ago. If Facebook improves that stat to 92% this year, is that a reasonable enough improvement to convince advertisers to return? 93%? 94%? It’ll never be 100%.

A return to advertising on Facebook sets up an element of a Faustian bargain. What are the hate-speech benchmarks that need to be applied to Instagram and other social platforms to make them safe environments to spend on? Are the benchmarks on YouTube or Snapchat or Twitter or TikTok different to those on Facebook? Do advertisers also apply the same benchmarks to advertising on the open web? How can marketers accurately measure whether their dollars are funding the good and not the bad of the web … and on a continuum? Any big platform changes will require testing and constant iteration: How long are advertisers willing to wait?

Of course, many marketers among the July boycotters probably won’t be agonizing over these details. Their participation is less about significantly damaging Facebook’s topline or drastically altering their long-term media plans and more about wanting to appear on the right side of history on an important and troubling issue. “Advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough,” said Mark Zuckerberg on a video call with Facebook employees last month, according to The Information.

Many advertisers will ultimately conclude the benefits of Facebook outweigh the risks.

“If they succeed in maintaining Facebook as a good and largely wholesome experience for almost all of their users almost all of the time, enough advertisers will be able to carry on supporting Facebook and its business model in spite of understandable ethical reservations,” said Rob Norman, former chief digital officer of WPP’s GroupM.

Facebook committed to its latest audit “a few days” before publishing the June 29 blogpost, said David Gunzerath, MRC svp and associate director.

In terms of when an audit was decided upon, a Facebook spokesperson pointed Digiday toward a Financial Times op-ed from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published in February 2020. He wrote, “We’re also looking at opening up our content moderation systems for external audit.” Facebook has also been discussing an MRC audit with marketers and cross-industry initiative the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which is run by the World Federation of Advertisers for some time the spokesperson said.

“We are beginning scoping discussions with the MRC now, we will share an update on the timing of this audit once finalized with the MRC,” said the Facebook spokesperson.

The MRC has submitted its proposal to Facebook, but the exact scope of the audit has not been decided at this stage. In its blog post, Facebook mentions the audit will assess its ability to apply brand safety controls within other partner publishers’ content that includes advertising slots and appears in-stream, in Instant Articles or on the Facebook Audience Network. Facebook said it also expects the audit to cover its partner monetization policies and content monetization policies — the rules publishers and creators must abide if they want to make money from their Facebook content through ad revenue — and how it enforces them.

Gunzerath said the MRC would also like Instagram to be included in the audit.

“We think it’s important that our audit be full scope, with as broad a level of coverage as is possible of the various platforms on which Facebook sells advertising,” Gunzerath said.

Additionally, The audit will look at how Facebook’s brand safety processes and controls adhere to industry guidelines. MRC’s brand safety standards are currently assessed against two frameworks from advertising industry group The 4A’s: “The Advertising Assurance Brand Safety Floor Framework” and the “Advertising Assurance Brand Suitability Framework.”

The “floor” framework details a “dirty dozen” of ad categories almost every advertiser would never want to appear against, such as explicit pornography, spam or illegal drugs. The “suitability” framework is more customizable, depending on an individual advertiser’s perceived level of risk to their brand.

GARM is also working on creating a modified version of the 4A’s frameworks — which were developed in 2018. MRC CEO George Ivie said the intention is to implement the most current and widely accepted floor and suitability structure so it could update the audit to include GARM’s framework once it is published.

Rob Rakowitz, GARM lead, said the initiative is working to drive transparency and clarify quality controls around the content pools open for advertising, ensure that there is a clear process for categorizing harmful content and to ensure platforms deploy moderators and technology in a way that gives the industry confidence that it’s a priority.

The MRC audit will determine whether Facebook has applied an advertising adjacency standard into its brand safety protections to protect advertisers from those dirty dozen categories.

Auditors will use a combination of “designed activity testing” — creating artificial news feed environments and simulating the insertion of objectionable content for the purpose of exercising the controls — and tests on the live, real-world version of Facebook. The second part will also test Facebook’s infrastructure for how accurately it measures its own brand safety performance. (YouTube has a complicated-looking algebraic formula for how it measures its brand safety error rate value.)

MRC’s audits are carried out by external accounting firms, primarily Ernst & Young. The company being audited picks up the tab and the cost — which depends on the scope of the audit and how many consultant hours are required — can range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to over a million dollars. Ivie declined to comment on the expected cost of this audit, beyond saying, “It’s a good-sized audit.” 

“People who use Facebook who care about safety — and the same of Google, Twitter, et cetera — generally don’t have a high tolerance for being associated with bad content: If it happens one time, it’s not a good thing,” said Ivie. “We have to execute some very strong testing to get this done.”

It’s unclear as to how long the audit might take.

Discussions between Google and the MRC about its brand safety audit began in 2018. In September that year, the MRC released its “enhanced content level context and brand safety” guidelines. The pre-assessment was completed in 2019 and YouTube’s audit is still ongoing. Gunzerath said the timeline for the audit is “six months or slightly longer,” but that doesn’t include a pre-audit (which may or may not take place.) Plus the conclusion of an audit doesn’t necessarily mean an immediate decision on an accreditation as there may be issues that need to be addressed or clarified.

Meanwhile, Facebook has other MRC audits in process, concerning its integration of third-party viewability vendors on Facebook and Instagram and a separate audit looking into the detection of sophisticated invalid traffic on both Facebook and Instagram. However, The Wall Street Journal reported in May, Facebook’s MRC audits have run into some issues over the way the platform measures and reports video ad metrics.

Audits are also not one-time events.

“We don’t go away once we audit and accredit,” said Gunzerath. “We audit again the next year. If we need to update the criteria, we will update the criteria.”

CNN’s Sentiment Analysis Moderator, dubbed SAM, uses neuro-linguistic artificial intelligence to determine the context and sentiment behind web pages to understand when content is brand-suitable. It scans all content types on CNN’s properties — CNN had over 252 million global monthly unique visitors in April, per Comscore — including text, speech to audio, video and galleries. Once scanned, it rates how positive that content is on a five-point scale, based on how suitable it is for an advertiser’s list of keywords.  

“We need to be cognizant about brands aligning with the content and message they want to tell,” said Rob Bradley, svp, CNN International Commercial. “It’s not just to avoid content that’s unsafe for campaigns but to align to target positive messages as well.” Such has been the move from brand safety to brand suitability over the last 18 months as brands and publishers want to soften the edges of blanket blocking.

CNN’s tool has been in the market for nearly a year but the company has recently started talking about it. SAM is on nearly every brief it puts in the market and used on direct and programmatic campaigns too, plugging into demand-side platforms like Google’s DV360 and Xander. Publishers’ lack of visibility of the amount of money lost from overt blocking in the open marketplace has been an enduring frustration.

“Keyword blockers are an industry stopper,” said Bradley, “as it’s gathered more steam it’s got out of control, we’ve heard this on the agency side too.”

For example, one brand advertising with CNN wanted to be adjacent to positive health stories to support and raise awareness of cancer, like help guides and recovery stories. CNN’s improving tech can pick up the relevance of stories about breast cancer awareness, letting it target the campaigns appropriately.

CNN found that in some cases over 50% of news content that scored neutral and somewhat positive on its scale was misclassified by existing keyword blocklists and would have been suitable for clients to advertise against. For another campaign, after switching from using an industry brand safety tool to using SAM, it unblocked five-times more inventory that was brand suitable for that specific client.

Finding a solution to the thorny problem of incorrect keyword blocking — which cost U.S. publishers $2.8 billion in 2019 — is getting more urgent. In the same week that brands pledged their support to the Black Lives Matter movement, they were putting terms like “Black Lives Matter,” “George Floyd,” “protest” and “Black people” on their keyword blocklists, Vice reported. Content related to the death of George Floyd and resulting protests was monetized at a rate 57% lower than other news content. Another publisher noted that coverage of BLM and protests generated 40% less revenue than pages on other topics.

Aside from depriving publishers of revenue and throttling advertising campaign goals, Vice notes that another consequence of overt blocking is that ads can then wind up in weird corners of the internet, contributing to fraud. CNN was not asked by any ad buyers to block any terms relating to BLM.

“[Sentiment analysis tools are] old technology but there is a renewed focus [on how they are used],” said Lawrence Dodds, client director at Universal McCann. Coronavirus has raised keyword blocking to the top of the agenda. Campaigns can struggle to deliver on reach or performance if they can’t run on trusted news sites around a major news topic.  

“We are going to see programmatic strategies evolve to include more bespoke deals that give advertisers greater access to inventory,” added Lawrence.

One such example is newspaper group Reach’s tool Mantis, which unlocks blocked inventory using IBM Watson and is white-labeling to other publishers. In the last few weeks, it has partnered with diversity-focused media network Brand Advance opening up content from a wider range of sources that advertisers can target. 

Another issue with heavy-handed industry-wide contextual tools is how they miscategorize content. CNN’s proprietary tech tool works in tandem with its internal content classification tool, Contextual Engagement Platform, based on trade body IAB’s content taxonomies. SAM scans and classifies the content before the page loads and pre-bid. Another frustration is that current tools weigh down the page. 

Rampant keyword blocking is a symptom of the ills from the open marketplace, but another factor is the fact that news publisher pages are dense with carousels and high volumes of traffic, often the default for programmatic spend, and publishers won’t be pulling inventory out anytime soon. 

These should be banner days for a Black media site that has long covered social injustice for a young audience.

But Blavity CEO and founder Morgan DeBaun describes challenges that start at the initial difficulty of raising investment as a Black company.

“For me, the systemic racism comes in the fact that I don’t ever get the benefit of the doubt,” DeBaun said at the Digiday Publishing Summit.

As DeBaun sought funds in Silicon Valley, she recalls how investors didn’t believe her site’s strong organic growth, achieved without investing in Facebook ads. “They’re like ‘well, we need access to your Google Analytics,’” DeBaun said.

“It’s all of this diligence that certainly is the process, but the question is, would you run the exact same media company through this process if they weren’t Black?”

Blavity was founded in 2014 and raised a $6.5 million Series A round in 2018.

As for 2020, DeBaun said that advertisers have obviously cut their spending. They’re also wary of having their ads presented alongside coverage of racial injustice or social unrest.

“We have ‘Black’ and ‘African American’ and ‘police’ and ‘brutality’ on all of our news articles. So we can’t run ads on them,” DeBaun said. “I’m taking so many financial hits for doing what’s right and covering what’s right — and what’s true, most importantly.”

Fortunately for DeBaun, Blavity doesn’t depend on display advertising beyond covering its editorial and freelance budget (“our real bread and butter comes with the experiential, 360 deals,” she said).

“I’m grateful that we have a diversified business where we can kind of float it. But it is a weird moment where I want to ramp up and hire more, but it’s not always the best business decision,” DeBaun said.

When everything falls afoul of brand safety

Advertisers were starting to come back because Covid was slowing down, but then this [George Floyd’s death] hit, so advertisers paused their campaigns out of respect. But as a Black media publication — and I read about this a bunch on Digiday, so I’m glad the topic is being addressed now— when you think about keyword blocking, we have ‘Black’ and ‘African American’ and ‘police’ and ‘brutality’ on all of our news articles. So we can’t run ads on them. I’m taking so many financial hits for doing what’s right and covering what’s right —and what’s true, most importantly. It’s this constant conflict. I’m grateful that we have a diversified business where we can kind of float it. But it is a weird moment where I want to ramp up and hire more, but it’s not always the best business decision.

‘After the gestures, corporations must follow through’

The day that they [Procter & Gamble] [make this statement] is the same day that three of our RFPs [request for proposal] from them get declined. So I just don’t believe the words until I see the results. Everyone’s making all these statements and commitments, and I also challenge when people say ‘we’re going to spend $100 million on the Black community.’ The question is, how much were you already spending? Because you might have already been spending $100 million when you add up all these little things you do. Is $100 million — when you spend $1 billion on advertising — enough? Or a billion plus, if we’re talking about a Procter & Gamble?

Advertising’s days may be numbered

What is the essence of the business of media in 2030? Is it still advertising? If so, we need to figure that out because we’re not going to be able to pay people living wages and really build out non-toxic workplaces and kick out all these old white men that don’t need to work here anymore. We need to have a whole industry conversation about the future of media.

Join us on Friday, July 10 at 12 p.m. ET on The New Normal, a weekly interactive show focused on how publishers are adapting their businesses. Team Epiphany founder Coltrane Curtis will talk with Digiday editor-in-chief Brian Morrissey about connecting with the influencers who truly shape culture. Register here.

From a level playing field to duopoly domination

While it is true that the revenue video unlocks is a crucial resource that must be captured and optimized, now more than ever it’s also true that leveraging it can be a challenge for digital publishers. It used to be that, if a publisher produced quality content, revenue would follow. Unfortunately, nearly all of that budget is now going to the biggest platforms, specifically Facebook and Google. According to data from MAGNA, In 2006, about 60 percent of ad spend was collected by publishers. Now that number has plummeted to less than 25 percent. 

The duopoly has access to millions of user-submitted videos, allowing them to recommend relevant videos on a user-by-user basis, a practice known as discovery. They’re reaping the benefits of video consumption like never before. This is the primary way that the publishing world has changed – from content creation to content discovery. 

Not surprisingly, while more advertising budgets are going to online video, Facebook and Google are collecting the vast majority of that spend. 

Still, video results can drive publisher success overall —   and not only for the biggest players. Even independent publishers that use it wisely can drive revenue. However,  effecting a more level playing field takes the right approach, and in the way of  evaluating strategy and tactics, the team in charge of video operations under any publisher’s roof should be able to say yes to the following five questions:

1. Is ad ops tapping into all of the video ad inventory available?

Most publishers that use video have a player that shows one specific video that is relevant to a  particular article. These publishers are missing out on a different video opportunity, namely a discovery unit.  Examples abound on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, discovery players automatically recommend more content that is relevant to the page’s topic.

If the ad ops team is only monetizing one of these two, then it’s leaving some of the most profitable inventory on the table. Video ad units are the fastest-growing category of digital advertising and are now the dominant form of advertising in most countries. Advertisers spent more than $45 billion on online video ads in 2019. That number is forecast to grow to $61 billion by 2021.

Publishers should turn to their video strategist to understand the best fit is for their pages, whether it be one main player, a discovery unit or both. 

2. Will the team’s video strategy keep viewers watching? 

According to Primis’s findings, for every video viewed per session there is on average a $7.20 increase in RPM. And so, publishers should focus on what gets users to continue watching their videos: relevancy and quality.

It’s important to match the right playlist to the right article. If the example is an article about Lebron James, it makes sense to recommend a series of videos about the NBA rather than NASCAR or rugby. To recommend multiple relevant videos, publishers need quantity (meaning, a sufficient video library) and technology (i.e., a discovery algorithm).

3. Is the video strategy  monetizing the publisher’s video inventory?

A key question is whether the publisher’s video vendors have the right demand partners, and enough of them. It’s important to avoid overcrowding, too: unless the team has implemented a smart SPO process, too many demand partners can be counterproductive. 

It’s also important to have the correct pricing strategy, setting different floors for each device, geography, browser, day of the week, vertical and more. This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding granularities that factor into an optimized pricing strategy. All these details matter. 

4. Can we trust our video partners to treat our inventory respectfully?

Publishers can’t monetize video without partners. They will almost certainly need to form a relationship with DSPs, tech vendors, syndicators or all of the above. 

Publishers must ask how transparent their video partners are and whether they have access to real time data and detailed reporting. While on the topic, they should also ask whether their video partners have committed to brand safety, low latency and GDPR/CCPA compliance.

5. Will the publisher get paid and on time by video partners?

A video strategy can be lucrative, efficient and perfect in nearly every way, but it won’t mean anything if the publisher’s vendors don’t pay up. It’s critical to find out whether vendors are publicly audited and insured against bankruptcies, and to check whether they pay consistently and on time. Oftentimes, publishers are lucky if their tech providers merely delay payments, reneging on their net-30-day commitments. For the less less lucky, they’ll go completely bankrupt and not pay out at all.

The key is to ask the team’s video strategist to confirm that vendors are either large enough that they’re unlikely to fold when challenged economically or backed by a company that is. There has been a move to vendors that are backed by big companies. Vendors such as Freewheel (Comcast), SpotX (RTL) or Primis (Interpublic Group and Universal McCann) can offer similar levels of stability. 

Taking back control

The duopoly has been winning for well over a decade, taking the lion’s share of ad spend from the publishers that created the content in the first place. Savvy publishers can break this trend, and video can play a critical role. But first publishers need to make sure their viewers are actually watching, monetize everything they can monetize, and gain ironclad assurances that their vendors will pay them. 

It all starts with asking the right questions. The five above will help.