In this op-ed, TrinityP3’s Kylie Ridler-Dutton questions whether brand safety practices need a makeover and whether marketers and buyers should place greater stock on whether their media investments are supporting the wrong information environments.
For more than two decades, brand safety in media planning has been largely about avoiding the obvious risks. We don’t want a client’s ad sitting next to graphic violence, hate speech, pornography or extremist content. We have built increasingly sophisticated technology and processes to make sure that doesn’t happen.
But lately I’ve been wondering whether brand safety has become too narrow a definition of the problem. Because what concerns me increasingly isn’t just where an ad appears. It’s what kind of information environment sits around it and what our media dollars might be helping to sustain.
That thought has been sitting with me after following some of the recent debates around media, politics, misinformation and the influence of increasingly powerful individuals and personalities.
The Joanna Howe debate is one example. Whatever your political position on abortion, the controversy has raised questions about how information, advocacy and political campaigning can move between social media, paid advertising, commentary and mainstream news.
Her campaign activity has generated significant online reach, including paid political advertising, while her public profile has grown through podcasting and social media. Recent media reporting has also examined claims made by Howe and the subsequent controversy around them.
What particularly interests me is what happens when these issues directly affect women.
Consent. Abortion. Reproductive health. Women’s rights.
These aren’t just political talking points for the people affected. They are real issues in people’s lives. And when misinformation or highly contested claims are repeated often enough across enough platforms, they can become hard to distinguish from fact.
That is where my marketing hat and my personal perspective start to collide.
As an industry, we spend a lot of time worrying about whether a brand appears in the wrong place. Shouldn’t we also consider whether we are helping to fund the wrong information environment?
The boundary between objective news, political advocacy, opinion, and misinformation has never felt more porous. Audiences aren’t necessarily going to traditional mastheads anymore. They are getting information through social feeds, podcasts, personalities, influencers, alternative news channels and increasingly partisan commentary.
At the same time, traditional media ownership remains concentrated. Lachlan Murdoch’s consolidation of control over News Corp and Fox has renewed discussion about the influence of concentrated media ownership and the editorial direction of major outlets. News Corp’s Australian interests include major newspapers and Sky News Australia. (ABC News)
I’m not suggesting that advertisers should decide which political opinions are acceptable.
I’m asking whether we should be more conscious of the environments we choose to spend money in.
Because when we buy an audience, we can’t completely separate those people from the information environment around them.
And this isn’t just an ethical question. It has real commercial consequences.
A good example is Australian radio right now. ARN has said its 25 percent share of the Sydney breakfast audience translated into only 19 percent of revenue, attributing the gap to brand-safety concerns around KIIS Breakfast. ARN has identified recovering that lost revenue as a commercial priority.
That’s quite a striking number. It shows that audience reach and commercial value aren’t the same thing.
You can have the audience. You can have the attention. You can have the impressions. But if advertisers become uncomfortable with the environment surrounding that audience, the value of that reach can diminish very quickly.
And that’s where I think the advertising industry needs to have a more grown-up conversation about information safety. Because cheap reach can be very tempting.
Programmatic buying, performance media and the relentless pressure to deliver lower CPMs have made efficiency one of the dominant measures of media value. But if the content environment is built around outrage, polarisation or questionable information, are we really getting efficiency — or are we simply buying attention at a lower price?
And what is the cost to the brand over time?
So what should advertisers actually be asking?
Perhaps the questions need to become more sophisticated than simply whether an ad is technically “brand safe.”
Does the publisher have transparent editorial standards?
Is there a meaningful distinction between news, opinion, sponsored content and political advocacy?
How does it deal with corrections when something is demonstrably wrong?
Who owns the media property?
Does that ownership matter to the editorial environment?
And perhaps the question I’m most interested in:
Would I be comfortable explaining to my customers where my advertising dollars are going, not just where my ads appeared?
That’s a very different question from a keyword blacklist. And I don’t think technology alone can answer it. In fact, automated brand-safety systems can sometimes get it badly wrong. They can avoid legitimate journalism simply because it contains words associated with difficult subjects, while letting more subtle misinformation or polarising commentary pass through.
That means this can’t simply be another compliance exercise.
It needs human judgment.
Media agencies have always been responsible for helping clients navigate the complexity of media. Perhaps understanding the quality of the information environment should increasingly become part of that strategic counsel. And I think there is an important distinction here.
This isn’t about censorship.
A publisher has the right to publish controversial opinions. A commentator has the right to campaign for a political position. People have the right to disagree with them.
But freedom of expression doesn’t mean an advertiser is obliged to fund every environment in which that expression takes place.
Equally, if a brand advertises in a particular publication or alongside a particular commentator, that doesn’t necessarily mean it endorses everything they say.
The responsibility sits somewhere in between.
We need to distinguish between allowing people to speak and deciding where we want to place our commercial weight.
And this is only going to become more complicated.
AI-generated content, deepfakes, political advertising, influencers, and increasingly fragmented news consumption are making it harder for audiences to understand what is genuine, what is opinion, what is advocacy, and what is simply untrue.
For me, this conversation matters beyond traditional media planning. I’m not suggesting advertisers can fix misinformation or solve political polarisation.
But we do have influence over the media economy through where we put our money.
So perhaps the question for modern brand custodians is no longer simply:”Was my ad safe today?”
Perhaps we should also be asking:”What kind of media environment did my money help sustain?”
Because brand safety may protect a brand from the content sitting next to it. Information safety asks whether we are comfortable with the ecosystem we’re helping to fund.
Kylie Ridler-Dutton is a senior global consultant with marketing management firm TrinityP3.
