Could “fake news” harm your brand? Some advertisers seem to think so — including P&G which recently cut $140MM in digital ad spend due to brand safety concerns.
But how widespread is the concern? Do marketers in general understand the potential damage to their brand if their ads are adjacent to dubiously sourced or out and out untrue content? Or how easy it is for this adjacency to happen in open programmatic marketplaces that are matching impressions to audience, not content?
The Conference Board’s Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) is beginning a research project to explore this issue. The goal is to understand how businesses contribute to the problem, particularly with ad-supported media models that make “fake news” lucrative, and identify actions that marketers can take to mitigate the impact on their businesses, and ultimately society.
Read more about the problem and the SNCR research project: SNCR Takes on Fake News