Ad Fontes Media, a small firm, has been categorizing media based on their bias and enabling marketers to buy advertising with its data for the past five years. By shifting funding to publications that might not agree but at least acknowledge the existence of their opponents, the goal is to restore a shared truth in society.
As each piece of content was manually tagged by Ad Fontes, advertisers had certain restrictions on the articles they could purchase until recently. However, a new AI model is altering that. The company is constructing a model that can classify tens of thousands of items every day using the roughly 70,000 pieces of content that have been identified by panels of right-, left-, and center-leaning raters. The outcome might reopen news to advertisers who have totally opted out of the format.
This week, Vanessa Otero, CEO of Ad Fontes, informed me, “We have the largest set of labeled data for this in the world.” The scale we can now use to grade articles for bias and reliability is pretty accurate when compared to our own human ratings.
Since 2005, advertisers have drastically reduced their newspaper spending by 80% while generally avoiding news websites. As news migrated online and began to compete with every other website, the expenditure purge started. However, a campaign for “brand safety,” where any news even somewhat contentious is placed on a blocklist, put an end to it.
The concept of brand safety was first intended to steer advertisers away from distressing content, such as films of beheadings, but it has since evolved into cowardice. Advertisers made news stories on politics, health, and social issues taboo as their reach grew. And as soon as they backed off, newsrooms disintegrated and the conversation was dominated by partisans who just had their own interests in mind. Our shared perception of reality vanished.
The evolution of news is somewhat to blame for the wariness of advertisers. Brands are uneasy selling advertisements on websites that use news as a front for advocacy and attacks since the category has grown online and the edges have become unpleasant. Ad Fontes wants to lure these brands back by reducing the level of prejudice.
Otero noted that high-caliber investigative reporting is costly. “Therefore, you see this degeneration in our media landscape where excellent journalism suffers, and garbage out there thrives, if enough brands distance themselves from that kind of stuff. We are therefore primarily attempting to alter that aspect of the ecology.
This is not to say that Ad Fontes stifles anyone who would challenge the status quo by solely supporting established media. It also assesses newcomers, such as the news company The Messenger, which is located in the chart’s more centrist region. But because of the political difficulty of the operation, sponsors are reluctant to make their involvement known.
Otero declared, “I’m not going to mention any [advertiser] names without prior written consent.” Because some people are a little sensitive when it comes to issues like political bias and how ad brands decide where to market, as you can guess.
However, Ad Fontes data is now accessible in the software that advertisers use to purchase advertising online. Additionally, it will provide even greater scale as its AI model develops, which should increase revenue. The corporation has a chance to support news sites that would reestablish the basis upon which we disagree in a culture where individuals find it difficult to communicate with those who hold different political values. It’s worth taking the chance.
