Forrester has published a new report ‘Finding Truth In The Misinformation Age’, which reveals how misinformation and disinformation permeate the advertising landscape. It also sheds light on the main culprits across the ad supply chain and the steps marketing executives can take to stop funding misinformation and disinformation inadvertently through their media strategies. Would you be interested in seeing a copy?
The monetisation of misinformation and disinformation content is a vicious cycle. And the open web is riddled with it — much of which the adtech industry makes easy to monetize. In fact, NewsGuard and Comscore found that top brands spent $2.6 billion on news sites spreading misinformation via programmatic media.
Key takeaways in the report include:
- Brands and agencies don’t know where all of their ads are being placed. 51% of UK online adults believe that brands always know exactly which websites their advertising appears on, however this is not the case.
- Media planning must become mindful, not just responsible. 57% of UK adults don’t trust brands that advertise on media properties that distribute misinformation and 55% don’t purchase from brands that advertise on media properties that distribute misinformation, therefore it’s imperative that B2C marketers must be more mindful with their media buys.
- Traditional brand safety measures give B2C marketers a false sense of security. Brand safety vendors are good at identifying baseline safety standards (such as violence or pornography), but not misinformation and disinformation.
- The entire ad supply chain is at fault. No one player in the advertising supply chain can eradicate misinformation and disinformation from the advertising ecosystem on their own. Breakdowns happen at every point in the programmatic media process — from domain monetization on the supply side to brand safety measures on the buy side.
- 60% of B2C marketing executives indicate that the spread of misinformation and disinformation will impact their 2022 marketing strategy.
A further look into this research is included here.