A hub on The Messenger home page, outlaid with Seekr branding, will house a rotating cast of the verified stories. Seekr will also receive placements in other ad units, including newsletters. 

“We have seen brands want to align with relevant content, so the idea of a scoring element became very useful,” Condo said. “It helps media agencies place ads against content that aligns with their brands.”

The Messenger will pay a licensing fee to Seekr, and Seekr will pay The Messenger for advertising inventory, though both parties declined to provide financial specifics. 

In addition to creating software designed to flag bias in journalism, Seekr also aggregates content on its website. As part of the partnership, it will now feature reporting from The Messenger. 

In total, the AI company has struck deals with around six publishers, including the entrepreneurship hub One Valley and the podcasting company Oxford Road, according to Condo. Seekr is also part of the consortium of investors in the process of buying Forbes. 

Navigating brand safety

The Seekr score appended to published stories serves two audiences, according to Beckman: The Messenger audience, who can trust the objectivity of what they are reading, and the advertising community.

The extent to which The Messenger readership will value these scores is unclear; few other publishers go through such efforts to demonstrate to consumers the quality of their reporting. 

For advertisers, however, the ratings create the appearance of unbiased coverage, which could entice brands looking to reach consumers without endorsing the political bent of the publisher. 

Still, the solution does little for the vast swaths of vital reporting that are demonetized because of keyword blocklists and sentiment analyses. According to a February 2021 Adalytics report, thousands of articles on premium publishers’ websites are deemed brand unsafe by verification firms.

Efforts from Seekr and The Messenger to create a neutral environment for advertisers, while helpful, circumvent rather than address this core issue, according to Otero. 

“Any publisher that demonstrates a commitment to highly reliable, minimally biased content and has a third-party verify that is in a more deserving position of brand dollars,” Otero said. “But there are real limitations to its revenue ceiling because of brand safety.”