Good morning,
Hi! My name is Rachel Winicov, and I’m an intern on the Adweek media desk this summer. I’m filling in for Sara today, as I will throughout the summer. You can check out my work here and at adweek.com/digital.
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For some advertisers, the word “riot” is the new “Covid.”
Keyword blocking as a trend has continued in this news cycle, with some marketers adding terms like “demonstration,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “Black” to block lists in their latest brand safety push.
Last month, Adweek reported on advertisers’ coronavirus-related keyword blocking. If you recall, in an effort to avoid unsafe content, advertisers eschewed web pages that contained words like “coronavirus” or “Covid-19.”
While concerns over block listing coronavirus terms have eased, brand safety concerns over protest-related terms are driving some advertisers back to keyword blocking. Advertisers see block lists as an easy catch-all to avoid problematic content, including racially-charged material surfacing with the protests. Yet brand safety experts from GroupM, Peer 39, and VICE told us that keyword blocking comes with serious limitations, and often, advertisers may not understand the long-term impact of a block list.
Speaking of blocking, Facebook and Instagram users can ban political ads with a new feature to be rolled out over the next few weeks. The opt-out button comes as Facebook continues to receive backlash for not censoring Trump, and after sustained criticism for rejecting calls to fact-check political ads.
As Ronan Shields, Adweek's programmatic editor writes: IAB Tech Lab’s decided to sunset its DigiTrust efforts. The move is not ‘huge’ in its own right, but arguably a portent of things to come. “Any service that relies on third-party cookies" has a "limited lifespan of utility,” the statement said.
So then, what of the Open ID Consortium, plus The Trade Desk’s ID initiative, or for that matter LiveRamp’s offering? While all such parties are striving to move beyond reliance on the cookie, a significant proportion of their wares are likely to rely on this intrinsic software. Especially outside of their domestic markets, so surely there must be updates from such players before long?
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts! I'm at rachel.winicov@intern.adweek.com.
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