Audience reach at risk with outdated brand safety practices

Published AdNews

Brands may be risking 23 million potential ad interactions each year because of outdated brand safety settings, according to research from industry body ThinkNewsBrands.

The Beyond Brand Safety. The Trust Advantage: Why context and credibility matter for brands, shows blunt keyword settings designed to protect the reputation of major brands are instead routinely blocking legitimate news content.

It analysed 1,200 news articles from Australian news publishers between July 2025 and June 2026.

The potential lost reach is equivalent to $180 million of advertising spend.

The audit found 57% contained at least one term capable of triggering an exclusion rule, and 38 per cent of ‘lower sensitivity’ news stories were incorrectly excluded.

“The evidence exposes outdated keyword block lists as a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said ThinkNewsBrands CEO, Vanessa Lyons.

“These lists are supposed to protect brands from appearing near harmful content online, but when they’re applied bluntly to trusted journalism, they do the exact opposite.

“They are excluding brands from engaged audiences in trusted news environments.”

Business and finance was the most affected category, with block lists flagging common commercial terms such as “bank”, “crash” and “dispute.”

The single biggest offender tripping up keyword lists was the word “Victoria”.

“This is a classic case of a list that was set up 10 years ago and left to just continue automatically blocking ads. To miss such a pivotal moment like the Olympics is a massive miss for brands,” Lyons said.

“Brand safety tools should do what they say on the tin: protect brands. They shouldn’t quietly kneecap their campaigns.”

ThinkNewsBrands said the answer is not to weaken legitimate safeguards, but to apply consistent scrutiny across a brand’s entire digital spend.

“For brands, this raises governance questions across the entirety of their media mix – what protections are operating? Who makes those decisions? What can I see? What control do I have?” Lyons said.

“Responsible media investment starts with knowing what you are buying. That means applying consistent standards of transparency, control and accountability.”

66 per cent of readers are fully or mostly focused while consuming news, more than 20 percentage points ahead of creator content.

85 per cent of news consumers report greater confidence in a brand when they encounter it in a news environment.

“We know Australians are increasingly concerned about platforms that seed and spread misinformation,” said Lyons.

“Trusted journalism matters more than ever – that’s the theme of this year’s World News Day – and we know the credibility of news publishing extends directly to the brands that appear alongside it.”

“That trust advantage is something brands should value, not inadvertently block themselves from.”

Only 1 in 3 marketers are confident that brand safety systems make appropriate placement decisions within news.

“This report is first and foremost about encouraging the sector to fix a practical advertising problem: giving marketers visibility, replacing blunt exclusion with contextual suitability, and protecting access to trusted audiences,” said Lyons.

“But it also raises a bigger question about where advertising dollars flow and the information environments, they help sustain.

“At best, outdated blocklists are unnecessarily limiting your campaign’s reach and effectiveness. At worst, advertisers are paying for systems that redirect investment away from trusted Australian journalism.

“Advertisers should be asking two very simple questions: What is being blocked without me knowing, and what is it costing my brand?”