A wake-up call for online advertising
Share
NMA found itself amid a media storm last week. This didn't come as much of a surprise since we chose to raise the issue in the first place. Our story about major brands pulling their ads from Facebook following their appearance on the BNP's page was jumped on by mainstream media around the world.
It may have seemed surprising for the digital industry's magazine to highlight this issue so strongly. But while we champion digital advertising and the opportunities of new forms of media like social networks, the accompanying growing pains can't be ignored.
The problem is that online advertising has sold itself as the first truly accountable, measurable and targetable medium. Unfortunately, each new industry advance throws this claim into the spotlight and often finds it wanting. NMA first raised the issue of misplaced ads more than four years ago, when brands were unaware their ads were appearing on P2P networks trading illegal content, and it's been thrown up regularly since.
The solution is unlikely to be technology, at least in the short term. For now, it lies in the hands of ad networks, media agencies and media owners. Ad networks have already started to allocate staff to manually check ad placements. This obviously introduces scalability problems, especially in an industry operating on already tight margins, but it's a reassuring step.
Talking of margins, media agencies need to increase their efforts to educate clients that the low CPM of a less targeted approach to online advertising doesn't come without risk. And the opt-out approach to online advertising, where boxes need to be ticked to keep ads away from broad-brush danger areas, needs to be refined by both sides.
The BNP issue may seem like a storm in a teacup, but dismissing it won't wash. As we go to press, ads for charities are appearing on homophobic MySpace pages. As online advertising continues to boom it'll come under ever increasing scrutiny. A marketing director doing even a cursory scan of some of the biggest online media owners will uncover numerous brand ad placements that would give them more than pause for thought about joining them. Is this really what we want?
Justin Pearse, editor, NMA justin.pearse@centaur.co.uk
