From chaos to consciousness: A guide to rethinking the advertising ecosystem
While diversity and inclusion are priorities for most advertisers, many struggle to reflect it in their media buying. Alex Littlejohn, managing director APAC, at Channel Factory, outlines the limitations of the current advertising ecosystem, and how a new way of thinking can help overcome them.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes.
And while I wouldn’t say we’re in a “hell”, I do think the advertising industry has found itself in something of a conundrum when it comes to DE&I in their media investment strategies. For example, research from The CMO survey shows that while two-thirds (68%) of the senior marketers surveyed said that DE&I is a priority for their company, fewer (59%) said that DE&I is a marketing priority for companies.
The argument for investing in more diverse creators across under-represented communities is fairly obvious – beyond improving the quality and authenticity of advertising in general, they often attract those hard to reach audiences in different social segments brands struggle to engage through traditional means. Moreover, brands with a higher diversity score in their advertising show an 83% higher consumer preference, illustrating the power of diverse audiences in delivering significant returns.
It’s been heartening to see that demand for supporting diverse creators is only growing, but the ability to meet this demand across the digital media landscape is significantly limited. One of the primary reasons why these creators may be struggling to find partnerships is because of how the industry defines media inventory that is eligible to carry advertising.
Many advertisers heavily rely on block lists and exclusion lists to try and combat this challenge – but these lists serve to restrict audiences and have made advertisers sensitive to anything deemed “bad” – this is often with narrowly defined parameters which don’t account for the nuances of different brands.
We’re seeing that these restrictions nearly always overly impact on diverse creators who may be making content deemed more ‘risque’ than mainstream creators. These limitations are the unintended consequences of the industry’s good intentions to increase brand safety for advertisers. But that doesn’t mean we have to be content with this state of play.
To understand how best to deliver DE&I when it comes to investing, we need to look at the three Cs – chaos, caution and consciousness.
Walking the line between chaos and caution
Advertisers need only look back at the past 15 years to understand how today’s caution was bred from chaos – and creators are the centre of how advertisers can balance the two.
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram – the proliferation of social media sites in the mid-2000s generated well-documented shifts in online advertising opportunities. Chief among these changes was the unwelcome emergence of new threats to brands, such as inappropriate content, fraud and privacy breaches. Brands are still struggling with how to meet these threats.
The new advertising opportunities created by these threats lacked standards and metrics and were often fraught with non-viewability, limited metrics, and misplacement. This period of chaos demanded measures and controls heralding the shift to a more cautious approach.
Years on, advertisers are used to living with regulations. Peak industry bodies, such as ADMA and the IAB, frequently educate the industry on best practices and disseminate the latest regulation updates for advertisers. This all speaks to an environment of heightened caution, supported by increasing controls and reliance on exclusions in order to create brand-safe environments.
Keyword-based brand safety and brand suitability methodologies have been central to the formation of brand safety for the modern era, but advertisers may have unintentionally shot themselves in their own feet by aiming for brand safety over brand suitability.
Brand safety is the bare minimum – and was undoubtedly necessary when online marketing boomed with social media. But it resulted in an era of “exclusion” where block lists served to drastically limit audiences, and inclusion lists weren’t effectively inclusive at all. Large groups of creators, many of whom have built their audiences from the ground up, were effectively locked out from being made available for advertising.
Brand suitability, on the other hand, is custom-fitted to deliver against each advertiser’s unique needs and can be better suited for the current marketing landscape. It can support advertisers in identifying and curating content from diverse and quality creators that can best support their brand values.
Aiming for brand suitability can help advertisers struggling with the need to keep brands safe whilst simultaneously experimenting with underrepresented and diverse creators. No one wants to return to the chaos of the past – but today’s caution can be managed in a much more effective way.
From exclusion to inclusion by being conscious
This journey that started with chaos, responded with caution, now needs to become “conscious”.
So what is being conscious in this context? I think of it as being aware of both ourselves, and what exists around us. It is also the basis for action. Being conscious – or being aware, alert, or thoughtful – matters because if we do nothing, we will be condoning an “Era of Exclusion”.
Being conscious is the basis for proactivity – and that’s something all advertisers need to become better at.
Proactivity means resisting the urge to rely on exclusion lists, and instead looking closely at creator audiences, content, ways of communicating, and developing a strategy that can effectively leverage all these aspects. In simple terms, it’s a more inclusive inclusion list approach.
Advertisers who take this extra step and employ a proactive approach will see much more value in the long run. Aligning your media spend and investment to channels that truly match your brand values will only see media performance strengthen over time.
Advertisers across the entire industry have had the best of intentions, but these have fallen short of solving the actual challenges. To effectively fund and support diverse creators, advertisers need to think more critically but also more boldly.
We will never return to the chaos of the past, but we should understand that being overly cautious can be equally damaging.
Advertisers should not be looking to restrict their campaigns. Instead, let’s think more proactively about opportunities to create custom audiences through diverse creators, and embrace conscious inclusion.
Alex Littlejohn is managing director APAC at Channel Factory.
