From competing for ad dollars with platforms to the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in advertising and journalism, the news business is facing a lot of existential questions.
At ADWEEK House in Cannes last week, media and ad tech leaders came together for a wide-ranging discussion about the state and fate of the news business.
Moderated by veteran tech journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher, the session featured executives from Ad Fontes Media, Bloomberg, Mobian, The New York Times, The Trade Desk, WPP, WSJ/Barron’s, and ADWEEK.
The discussion took place in the context of plummeting trust in journalism, a stark shift in news consumption to social media, and the threat of generative AI on the ad business and on publisher IP. Meanwhile, advertisers remain wary of advertising next to hard news, often due to outdated brand safety logic.
Against this backdrop, Swisher challenged panelists to explain what’s working, what’s broken, and what needs to change about the business of news.
The distinction between news and media
One of the key tensions centered on the language the industry uses to describe media, versus content, versus journalism.
Swisher pointed out that companies like Marriott and LinkedIn now refer to themselves as “media brands.” Panelists agreed the definition has become diluted, which risks conflating journalism with content marketing and entertainment.
“I was really glad that you distinguished between delivering factual news, because I think using the broad term ‘media’ might be part of the problem,” said Joy Robbins, global chief advertising officer at The New York Times.
Vanessa Otero, CEO of Ad Fontes Media, offered a framework to divide media into “fact-based reporting, analysis, opinion… and then misleading, inaccurate content.” She added that the nature of the content matters more than the size of the publisher.
Brand safety bugbear
Much of the panel focused on a familiar pain point for publishers: advertisers avoiding news.
Jonah Goodhart, CEO of Mobian, pointed out that between 20% and 50% of news content is being marked unsafe by “two companies that generate $1.1 billion in revenue this year”—a dig at verification vendors.
He added that trying to persuade brands to fund news media out of moral necessity is the wrong approach; advertisers respond to conversations about performance.
“You can’t guilt them into it,” The New York Times’ Robbins agreed. “That’s something they can’t sell to their CEO.”
Susan Schiekofer, chief media officer at WPP Media, said that programmatic and keyword blocking defaults still suppress quality journalism, even though the media buying giant “spent a lot of time doing a huge cleanup.”
“It’s still really easy to suppress the news category,” she said.
