Advertisers slow to respond on brand safety calls

Australian advertisers are taking their time to respond to concerns about ad fraud, viewability concerns and fabricated first-party metrics, with news media reporting a ten per cent fall in revenue in the March quarter.

Standard Media Index AU/NZ managing director Jane Schulze says new News Media Index data shows only marginal growth in the share of programmatic ad spend attributed to quality websites from the December 2016 to the March 2017 quarter.

"Given the concerns about brand safety voiced by many experienced advertisers we were expecting to see a much larger shift in programmatic spending to quality brand-safe environments this quarter," she says.

"The reality is that there are very few companies publishing quality editorial content online, so we can only think that as this debate kicked off early in the quarter there's a lag in making any changes and we'll see a higher programmatic share for quality sites in the June quarter data."

The news media sector reported $2.22 billion in advertising revenue for the 12 months to March, the third largest media sector based on advertising revenue. While digital news media revenue grew 6.2 per cent in the March quarter, print declined by 14.7 per cent, largely driven by the ongoing reduction in media agency bookings over the period. Print revenue, however, continues to account for around 77 per cent of total sector ad revenue.

The News Media Index, which reports all print and digital ad revenue to news media publishers from agencies and direct clients, is independently verified by SMI.

The latest data shows premium news media websites attracted less than ten per cent of the total programmatic ad market's revenue in the March quarter despite reaching 70 per cent (or 13 million) of Australians aged 14+ each month.

NewsMediaWorks chairman Michael Miller - who is executive chairman of News Corp Australia - says the News Media Index results supported advertisers' growing concerns regarding programmatic placement of ads.

"With advertisers airing brand safety concerns relating to inappropriate ad placement via programmatic, it is worrying to learn that a vast majority of programmatic advertising is still being placed on unsafe ad networks and questionable long-tail sites, many with ineffective or non-existent editorial standards and environments," he says.

"News media's mass reaching print and digital offering continues to give advertisers the confidence that their messages are being published in premium, brand safe environments where consumers value and trust the content.

"We call upon advertisers to reconsider whether the short term results delivered by low quality digital environments are actually causing long term harm to their brands."