Digital marketing #brandfail
With great reach comes great responsibility
Through digital marketing brands have the capability to reach millions of potential customers in new ways, leveraging a much longer tail of inventory. Programmatic media buying, content syndication, influencer networks and more have enabled industrial-scale, distributed targeting at relatively low cost — thanks in large part to automation. Bulk is the new big in terms of reach.
But there’s a trade-off: trading in high volume ‘micro buys’ through third-party platforms necessitates disintermediation — often reducing transparency and control over where and how a brand is being (re)presented.
Just in the past week, an agency showcased the seemingly incredible ease at which it is possible to create a fake Instagram influencer account, sign up to popular micro-influencer marketing platforms and attract brand spend.
Ad fraud — especially in display advertising — has been an issue for a while. Indeed, during the U.S. presidential election Macedonian teenagers infamously earned thousands in ad exchange-driven impressions from peddling clickbait content on fake news pages.
But beyond financial loss, risk to reputation is a rising concern. Being associated with anything ‘fake’, appearing in undesirable places or alongside dubious content can cause significant damage to consumer sentiment toward a brand.
Sensitivity is high.
Earlier this year an investigation by The Times found that taxpayer-funded ads from the government and ads from numerous high profile companies, including Channel 4, the BBC, Argos and L’Oréal, were appearing alongside extremist content on Google and YouTube — including videos of American white nationalists, a hate preacher banned in the U.K. and a controversial Islamist preacher. The backlash was swift.
Havvas was the first of many to pull all ad spend on Google and YouTube in the U.K. in the following days and weeks. At the time, Havvas said it had taken the step after talks with Google had broken down because the company had been “unable to provide specific reassurances, policy and guarantees that their video or display content is classified either quickly enough or with the correct filters”.
(It’s a problem for publishers too, going the other way. Low quality clickbait content pushed through native ad platforms erodes editorial equity. But I digress.)
And these issues are coming to a head at a time of heightened consumer activism.
For example, in August 2016 the Stop Funding Hate campaign was launched in the U.K. with the express aim of encouraging major brands to pull ad spend from media outlets it accuses of fueling ‘hate and division’. It has almost a quarter of a million followers on its Facebook page and is highly active across social media, directly engaging (and trying to shame) brands by spotlighting contentious content adverts are appearing alongside. Similar movements and campaigns have sprung up in many other countries around the world.
Nearly half (47 percent) of millennials believe CEOs have a responsibility to take a stand and speak up about issues that are important to society. These expectations of corporate culture and civility are creating more of a charged reputational environment for digital marketing.
The big social networks and internet companies are acutely aware of the problem and are investing heavily in new technology, especially AI. This is welcome, but no channel will ever be 100 percent ‘brand safe’. Marketers will need to continue model risk versus reward, and scenario plan for reputational issues that may arise. Spending on the ‘long tail’ of inventory and influence requires high levels of due diligence.
To miss-quote Spiderman, with great reach comes great responsibility.
