But to achieve enough open-exchange programmatic revenue to sustain Jezebel, the title will have to navigate a host of brand safety issues. Advertisers, using keyword blocklists that prevent their ads from running alongside content containing flagged terms, often avoid the kind of charged reporting Jezebel has built its brand on.
Paste, which reports on music and entertainment, has little experience with brand suitability measures, and Jackson has recently spent time with agencies and advertisers familiarizing himself with the technology.
His initial experience has been jarring. Jezebel already received one request for proposals that had a keyword blocklist of 3,500 terms, including the word “song,” according to Jackson.
“I realize that part of my new job is going to be speaking out about how brands’ insistence on what they call brand safety—but is really blandness—is going to hurt news sites across the board, particularly the ones covering important issues,” Jackson said.
Splinter and the 2024 election
As part of the November transaction, Paste also acquired acerbic news and politics publisher Splinter.
The media company plans to relaunch Splinter in hopes of capitalizing on the 2024 election season and its attendant political advertising. However, it will face similar—if not more challenging—brand safety hurdles in monetizing its coverage.
Paste has also begun the multi-month process of migrating both sites to the Paste content management system, which should unlock advertising, data and workflow efficiencies.
With both sites, the key to commercial viability lies in partnering with brand partners that want to support—rather than simply tolerate—their reporting, according to Jackson.
“We know that there are brands out there that will want to reach these audiences,” he added. “We have two decades of experience doing that.”
Source link
