Category: In the News

Publishers had mixed feelings about how 2024 shook out for their companies and the media industry as a whole, and it looks like those feelings are going to continue on into 2025. In other words, publishers are optimistic about this year in some important ways, but there are also some things they don’t feel great about.

This is according to a Digiday+ Research survey conducted in the fourth quarter of 2024 among more than 50 publisher professionals.

Digiday’s survey found that it’s a mixed bag for publishers when it comes to optimism for 2025 — they’re optimistic for their individual companies but not optimistic about the industry as a whole (similar to our findings about publishers’ feelings on whether 2024 was a successful year).

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Chad Schulte, senior vice president of agency partnerships and strategy, Seedtag

In this time of unprecedented access to information, it’s crucial objective journalism remains a cornerstone of an informed and functional society. However, as modern news organizations grapple with increasing financial pressures, a troubling trend has emerged: advertisers’ over-reliance on blunt-object keyword-blocking measures.

These practices are designed to shield brands from content deemed controversial or unsafe but unintentionally undermine the viability of a healthy and functioning news media. At the heart of this issue is a misunderstanding of how the public views advertising in the context of news. Rather than associating brands with negativity, readers often trust brands more when their advertisements appear alongside professional journalism.

Broad ad-blocking strategies discourage coverage of complex topics

The financial strain on news organizations is a longstanding public affair, some of which is self-inflicted. With digital advertising now the dominant revenue stream for news outlets, applying certain brand-safety practices has led to the widespread demonetization of critical news topics. Words like conflict, crisis, protest and even election often trigger automated ad-blocking algorithms, depriving articles on these topics of revenue opportunities.

The implications are profound: Newsrooms face financial disincentives to report on complex issues that require public attention.

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