Outdated brand safety practices put audience reach at risk

• Software and practices designed to stop ads from appearing near harmful content online are instead excluding suitable, trusted news content – 1 in 2 news articles are excluded by outdated brand safety tools.
  
• Brand safety tools scan news stories for keywords. Misapplied keyword blocking is risking $180 million in ad spend each year, an amount of blocked activity equivalent to missing a staggering 23 million potential ad interactions.
  
• Australia’s marketers are in the dark: most aren’t clear on how keyword blocking works.

Brands are unwittingly risking 23 million potential ad interactions each year because outdated brand safety settings are incorrectly blocking advertising from appearing alongside trusted journalism.

New Australian research from ThinkNewsBrands – Beyond Brand Safety. The Trust Advantage: Why context and credibility matter for brands – reveals blunt keyword settings designed to protect the reputation of major brands are instead routinely blocking legitimate news content, with 1 in 2 brand-safe news articles incorrectly excluded by outdated brand safety tools. The potential lost reach is equivalent to $180 million of advertising spend.

“The evidence exposes outdated keyword block lists as a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said ThinkNewsBrands CEO, Vanessa Lyons.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

Launched on World News Day, ThinkNewsBrands says this report is a wake-up call for brands and advertisers.

Words that trigger the campaign drain: Beyond Brand Safety analysed 1,200 news articles from Australian news publishers between July 2025 and June 2026. The audit found 57 per cent contained at least one term capable of triggering an exclusion rule, and 38 per cent of ‘lower sensitivity’ news stories were incorrectly excluded.

Business and finance was the most affected category, with block lists flagging common commercial terms such as “bank”, “crash” and “dispute”; a third of articles blocked were sports stories. The single biggest offender tripping up keyword lists was the word “Victoria”.

The research also uncovered that “Paris” remained on an exclusion list long after the 2015 terror attacks, potentially affecting advertising opportunities around the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“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,” Ms Lyons said.

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

Brand safety should pass the same test everywhere: The research raises wider questions about how advertisers assess risk across digital media.

Advertisers consider brand-safety controls almost twice as necessary on social platforms as in news, yet Australian journalism is still subjected to tougher brand safety settings.

ThinkNewsBrands says the answer is not to weaken legitimate safeguards; rather, it is 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?”

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

Marketers lack visibility on how placement decisions are made, only 1 in 3 are confident that brand safety systems make appropriate placement decisions within news.

The report recommends marketers audit keyword, category and domain exclusions; compare the protections, transparency and controls available across their digital media mix; and use contextual capability or direct publisher solutions where additional suitability controls are required.

The Trust Advantage: News is one of the highest-trust environments measured and the highest-attention environment, with 66 per cent of readers fully or mostly focused while consuming news – more than 20 percentage points ahead of creator content.

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

“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,” said Ms Lyons.

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

A broader responsibility: In a world saturated with AI content, responsible media investment is becoming an increasingly important consideration.

“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.”

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

“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?”

About ThinkNewsBrands

ThinkNewsBrands is the peak advocacy body for Australia’s news media. We champion the role of professional journalism which provides facts, accountability and public trust in an era increasingly shaped by misinformation, synthetic content and algorithmic amplification. We provide authoritative data, research and insights that demonstrate the enduring influence and commercial effectiveness of news publishing; equipping marketers, media agencies and brands with the evidence to make informed advertising investment decisions. At a time of growing uncertainty, news media offers Australia’s safest and most trusted advertising environment, creating clear commercial value for brands while strengthening the communities and democratic systems they serve.

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