Fake news, more politely termed misinformation, is not just an issue for consumers looking for legitimate sources of news. It is also a real issue for brands. Advertisers don’t want their brand messages to be adjacent to fabricated content, or to be perceived to condone it. IPG Mediabrands and Zefr are tackling this issue for the agency network’s clients with campaign solutions that give brands the ability to avoid misinformation across social platforms in priority areas such as political, climate, healthcare, AI-generated, and brand-specific content. This partnership is backed by research data from IPG Mediabrands’ media intelligence and investment unit, MAGNA, and powered by tech-driven performance media agency, Kinesso. It is an extension of the existing collaboration between IPG Mediabrands and Zefr, and is aligned with the agency network’s Media for Good focus on brand safety, media responsibility, marketplace equity, and sustainability.
Tyler Dmytrow, VP head of social at Kinesso, says, “While advances in AI have recently given increased tools to those trying to mislead, through deepfakes or fabricated/inaccurate content, they also lead to new solutions to monitor and prevent our clients from showing up adjacent to undesirable content. Through our partnership with Zefr, new capabilities, like the adjacency tools, allow us to process videos at scale and flag content on a multitude of meaningful dimensions, leading to enhanced ability to protect our clients’ media investments.”
Building on previous research on consumer perceptions of misinformation, MAGNA Media Trials and Zefr have released a new study, Ads in Misinformation, which tested ad effectiveness of standard content or verified information against misinformation for brands in the U.S. auto, CPG, insurance, and finance industries. The insights from the study contributed to the development of the new campaign tools currently being rolled out across the integrated, end-to-end campaign process delivered by Kinesso for IPG Mediabrands’ clients.
The research found that 47% of participants believed a brand’s integrity is compromised when its ads appear next to misinformation. Regardless of political affiliation, misinformation was found inappropriate, as agreed by 76% of those in the middle, 83% of left-leaning, and 74% of right-leaning. In addition, the study found that misinformation generated by AI isn’t always easy to spot, with 36% of participants correctly identifying this type of misinformation. Science-related information is harder to identify because it confuses people. Only 22% of participants could correctly identify healthcare misinformation, while 53% were unsure and 25% thought the information was real.
Climate is also another sensitive topic. For eco-friendly brands, 44% of those surveyed said they would question a brand’s overall sustainability efforts if its ads appeared next to environmental misinformation. Most participants who viewed climate misinformation ads thought the misinformation was real (36%) or were unsure (42%).
Zefr is a data platform that enables brands and agencies to activate and measure the suitability of a brand’s media placement according to the GARM industry standards.
