Vice Urges Advertisers to Stop Blocking Black Lives Matter and Related Keywords
Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorVice Media Group is calling on the advertising industry to review “brand safe” keywords, after the company recently found that ad blocklists have included such terms as “Black Lives Matter,” “George Floyd,” “protest” and — in one case — “Black people.”Speaking at the company’s virtual Digital Content NewFronts, Marsha Cooke, Vice Media Group’s SVP of impact, outlined the problem, which she called Cooke called “the brand-safety paradox.” While such strategies are designed to keep advertisers away from controversial topics, the result is that their marketing messages end up against content that is “pretty far removed from the national conversation,” Cooke said.In a recent internal analysis, Vice Media Group