NEW YORK, NY (April 28, 2022) -- Media.net, a leading contextual advertising technology company, today announced a partnership with NewsGuard, an organization that rates news sources for credibility and transparency, to help brands advertise responsibly on high-quality news—while avoiding brand safety risk from misinformation and disinformation.  Media.net’s deep partnerships with agencies and the major holding companies will benefit from this additional layer of safety for thousands of advertisers on the platform.

NewsGuard works with advertisers, agencies, and ad tech companies to help protect brands from ad placements on sites spreading false narratives and instead direct their ads to trustworthy news sites. Through the partnership, Media.net will gain access to NewsGuard’s detailed trust ratings for thousands of news and information sources, which are produced by a team of trained journalists using nine basic, apolitical journalistic criteria that assess the credibility and transparency practices of each site.

The ratings are updated continuously to account for new and changing domains, changes in ownership or editorial practices, and other factors that affect credibility and brand safety for news sites.

By applying NewsGuard’s ratings as an additional factor in enforcing its stringent platform policies related to news and information inventory, Media.net will ensure its advertisers continue to have access to high-quality news inventory and further mitigate the ongoing brand safety risk from misinformation and disinformation sources.

“We pride ourselves on providing high-quality, high-performance inventory for our advertisers —and we’re excited to expand on that commitment to the support of quality journalism,” said Karan Dalal, SVP, Business Development and Operations at Media.net. “Through this new partnership with NewsGuard, Media.net advertisers can rest assured that our news inventory is subject to an additional layer of scrutiny and vetted for credibility and misinformation risk by subject-matter experts using clear, transparent criteria.”

NewsGuard Co-CEO Steven Brill praised Media.net for its proactive approach to addressing the issue. “Over the past several years, we’ve seen the dramatic impact that misinformation has on real-world events—and the power of quality journalism to keep the public informed,” Brill said. “We at NewsGuard applaud Media.net’s consistent dedication to protecting its advertisers from those risks—while providing high-quality news inventory for clients who want to invest in advertising on legitimate journalism, thus helping to fund the news we all need.”

Advertising on news and information has become more complex for brands in recent years due to the challenges of identifying credible news sources and the brand-safety risks inherent in programmatic advertising, especially because of the thousands of sites now regularly publishing misinformation and false news. NewsGuard has estimated that $2.6 billion in programmatic advertising revenue is inadvertently spent on misinformation websites each year, including more than 4,000 top brands that advertised on COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic.

Through the partnership with NewsGuard, Media.net advertisers gain even greater  brand safety protection while further strengthening their ability to advertise on quality news inventory. Media.net already deploys its proprietary contextual technology across 150 million distinct URLs per day, analyzing page-level intent to provide a precise and deep understanding of the variance of topics, while identifying valuable brand-suitable content for advertisers. This partnership is emblematic of Media.net’s commitment to furthering its mission of creating a safe and transparent advertising experience for buyers, sellers, and ultimately consumers.

In addition to the impact on advertisers, Media.net’s partnership with Newsguard strengthens their mission to create a healthy and safe ecosystem for advertisers and agencies.  Brands that advertise on high-quality news sites see significant financial benefits. A case study using NewsGuard’s data found that brands can achieve 9% lower CPMs and higher click-through rates by advertising on trusted news sources vetted by NewsGuard’s journalists.

“It can be challenging for brands to know how to advertise responsibly on news—but through this partnership, Media.net is making it even easier,” said NewsGuard VP of Partnerships Carter Stone. “We’re pleased to be working with Media.net to support quality journalism.”