‘It’s Whack-a-Mole’: How The Root Is Navigating Blocklists

Keyword blocklists will outlast another crisis. The Root, the Black news, culture and opinion site published by G/O Media, has been selling out ad inventory over the last few months, thanks in part to the digital advertising rebound and the shift in more brands looking to fund diverse journalistic voices. Yet as demand has gone up, especially in the weeks leading up to Juneteenth, so has the size of keyword blocklists and the number of advertisers wielding bloated or outdated lists when they want to advertise with The Root. “We have seen an increase in advertisers using blocklists and an increase in the size,” Michael Clark, head of multicultural sales and business development at G/O Media, told Adweek. To counter this, it aims to "educate them on the disadvantages of using extensive keyword blocking and by teaching cultural nuances," he added. Thanks to unruly blocklists, the majority of the publisher's inventory—including pieces on American cities that thrive on Black culture and human interest stories about gymnast Simone Biles—would be wrongly deemed unsafe by advertisers. Since the murder of George Floyd last year, reigniting a global Black Lives Matter movement, new phrases and words crop up on the keyword blocklists handed to the publisher to use across ad buys on The Root. Typically, these lists run about 300 words long and they’re often the same as the list an advertiser would use in a general news environment, despite the very different content. Blocklists, a brand safety tactic gone wild, tend to sweep up and block content that is not only brand safe but, in cases like The Root, more relevant to what the brand is looking for and the biggest stories impacting the community. Oversized lists truncate publisher revenue as well as hamper advertiser campaign reach. And for all the media attention, client education and shifts to brand suitability over the last year, they’re still being used more than ever. “Clients are equally sensitive about keyword blocking today as they were a year ago,” Jay Friedman, president of Goodway Group told Adweek. “Exactly what they’re sensitive about depends on the day and issues in the media, sensitivities around certain topics ebb and flow.” More advertisers, more lists Like a lot of publishers, The Root is enjoying a revenue windfall. Ad revenue for The Root is up 445% year-to-date, although it wouldn’t share from what base. It has already surpassed 2020 in revenue, the publisher said, bearing in mind the moribund impact of the pandemic in the first half of last year. For context, in the first half of this year, all G/O Media ad revenue is up 400% from the same period last year, when ad revenue was in the doldrums. So far this year, the number of advertisers on The Root, and across what it calls its multicultural audience segments, have tripled in the first half this year compared with the same period the previous year. But success comes with a caveat. With more advertisers—and more brands looking to work with The Root outside of multicultural brands or agencies such as Burrell, Walton Isaacson and Fluent360—the number of advertisers using lists grows. G/O Media’s multicultural team used to have a few meetings each quarter discussing keyword blocklists. Now, it's several times a month. When these go well, they massage these lists, knocking off a few inconclusive or generic terms. A common conversation, said Clark, is educating CMOs between the nuances between "slay" meaning kill versus "slay" meaning to impress or amuse. And while the publisher feels it's making progress, there's still a way for the industry to go. Clients find there’s no negative impact from removing words from the lists. Instead it expands the reach to make the campaign viable, even more crucial on publishers like The Root compared with news. No non-general news site focused on diverse or minority communities “will be scaled to the point where you can block words of common vernacular and still reach the right amount for people for a successful campaign,” David Spiegel, chief revenue officer at G/O Media, explained to Adweek. Ultimately, overt blocking is a symptom of the opacity of the open marketplace. Often the lists are crafted in a different room from the CMO looking to support diverse journalistic voices. Equally, tech vendors, claiming to add a layer of control, can end up obfuscating matters further, leaving publishers unaware what words are triggering the block and buyers unclear where their ads appear. “It’s whack-a-mole, and it’s not going to be solved overnight,” said Spiegel. Timeliness is another factor. "The biggest challenge with keyword blocking," said Friedman, "is that the keywords are 'blocked' and there is no reminder for 90 or 180 days to decide whether or not to allow them back." Blocklists Are ‘Surgery With a Guillotine,’ So Dow Jones Built a Brand Safety Tool

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

‘It’s Whack-a-Mole’: How The Root Is Navigating Blocklists

The number of advertisers on the The Root has tripled

Lucinda Southern

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Lucinda Southern