Aimee Picchi from CBS MoneyWatch reached out to obtain commentary from IAS about working with Facebook on brand safety concerns. I connected with Aimee to understand her ask, gain additional context, and prepare our Chief Product Officer, David Hahn, for his interview with her. I then staffed the call and provided necessary follow ups. This article led to additional interest from CNBC for a broadcast opportunity during Advertising Week.
You can view the briefing sheet I prepared for the media engagement here. Below are the segments of the article that feature several quotes featuring Dave.
"Trust has been an issue": Facebook ads take a sour turn
"We are at a crossroads -- the internet provides a ton of information, and some of it is acceptable to advertisers and some is not," said David Hahn, chief product officer at Integral Ad Science, a firm that assesses fraud and brand safety concerns and works with Facebook, among other clients. "If a brand appears next to objectionable content, about 35 to 45 percent of customers rethink their relationship to the brand."
Digital advertising is capable of reaching huge audiences with one ad buy, a scope that is creating new issues for advertisers, such as ensuring their ads appearing on sites that align with their brands. In one case earlier this year, Kellogg's and Vanguard were among the companies that pulled ads from conservative news site Breitbart because it didn't mesh with their policies and images.
"The sheer volume isn't like anything we've ever seen with other channels," Hahn said. "If you buy TV slots, chances are you can pay someone to watch that. If you deliver 100 million impressions every day, you can't do that."
Some advertisers maintain "white lists" of sites they've pre-approved as appropriate for their brands, as well as "black lists" of sites and apps that are forbidden for the campaign. That doesn't always guarantee a company can sidestep unsavory content, with Integral Ad Science finding that one-third of ad impressions flagged as "risky" involved violence, such as an ad appearing next to coverage of a bombing.
Facebook's $493 billion market valuation is based on its huge advertising growth. But whether that continues may hinge on trust, including whether consumers continue to hand over their data to Facebook and whether advertisers feel there's enough oversight into where and how their ads appear.
"Facebook, like any company, has to deal with the trust it has with multiple stakeholders," said Northwestern's Grayson. "The bigger a company gets, the more they have to think about these various stakeholders more seriously."
At the same time, Americans are placing less trust in institutions, ranging from the media to the government, he added. That growing mistrust heightens the risks for Facebook if its users decide the company isn't acting in their best interests -- or selling ads to shady companies or to facilitate propaganda.
Without trust, he said, "the whole business model for Facebook falls apart."
Facebook and other digital platforms are working behind the scenes to weed out fake accounts, Hahn of IAS said.
"There are services that you can use to make sure you are de-risked, and that's what we are working toward," he said. "Trust certainly has been an issue, but we think we're getting a lot better."
Read the full article here.