Stop the Toxic Content—Funding Hate, Lies and Insurrection

Advertising needs moral standards

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The events of the last several months have left us all gobsmacked, pondering hard questions about our own morality and responsibility. We have witnessed lies masquerading as the truth and hate justifying immoral actions.

A report last month from DoubleVerify illustrates the power of hate leading up to the Capitol assault, with inflammatory and misleading news skyrocketing by 83% during the November political campaigns and hate speech tripling following the attack itself.

As leaders in the advertising community, we already know the power of words designed to inspire our customers, motivate changes in behavior, strengthen our brands and sell our products. But many of our ad dollars have also funded the digital channels that spread the hatred and lies that prompted the violence on the Capitol. The study projects that websites and apps hosting that kind of hateful and false content may have doubled their ad revenue over the prior year.

No longer can the advertising industry be complicit in the poisoning of our public square by blindly and passively spending our ad dollars on platforms, publishers and ad-tech partners who facilitate the distribution of such toxic content. We must strengthen our resolve for ethical media practices. The Capitol attack alone ticks half the boxes on the Brand Safety Floor & Brand Suitability Framework, and all of those infractions were wrapped in a cloak of misinformation and disinformation.

Draw a line in the sand

Several efforts to place more emphasis on the importance and significance of brand safety have been created over the last several years. Too often, those initiatives have been met by resistance from the industry they are designed to strengthen, as major players show more concern for market cap than moral leadership, a greater focus on traffic than truth, and a stronger commitment to clicks than clarity. Many of those same players have made excuses ranging from the legalistic to the technical on the reasons they have not—or cannot—forcefully monitor or limit inflammatory or false content on their properties. 

No longer. We learned a hard and scary lesson in January, and we as an industry must not allow the status quo to stand. Our individual buying decisions speak with a louder voice than our policies or public statement. We must ensure our spending goes to the companies who live our values and have created systems to prevent the lies, violence, deception and hatred that are tearing our nation apart.

Moral standards

Companies of all sizes should ensure they adopt, enforce and promote the following steps to mitigate the risk that their companies will support such unacceptable content.

  • Set clear and specific standards for content that is suitable and supports brand/company values, while aligning with all internal stakeholders.
  • Appoint and empower an executive in the role of Brand Safety Officer to ensure clear responsibility and communications for upholding those standards, as well as their enforcement.
  • Invest in brand safety/suitability partners to turn those policies into action by limiting where their ad dollars appear and ensuring those content requirements are a part of all contracts.
  • Set, monitor and maintain best practices through collaboration with—and certification by—recognized brand safety organizations.

There is no longer any excuse for inaction. We have to better utilize the technology to establish these standards. We have advanced platforms and systems that elevate content based on algorithms and engagement, and we have the expertise to use those tools for good.

If we continue to fund the dissemination of the lies and hatred that are rending our country and destroying our civic dialogue, our industry will own the consequences. We must—and we can—demand better.