About

We can do better together

When COVID-19 struck, consumers retreated to their homes—and advertisers receded from digital media. This disproportionately impacted the News & Editorial category, which suffered an 88% decline versus 70% for non-news sources, according to eMarketer. The recent surge of coverage on racial injustices further affected ad spend for various publications.

A major cause behind these declines: content blocking. Many brands have strict guidelines to block content that include words like COVID-19, Coronavirus, Quarantine, Vaccine, Working From Home, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, Protests and many other seemingly triggering keywords. What do these sensitivities say about the narrative that brands are trying to surround? This blunt approach to content blocking creates two urgent problems: important news for our own public good goes unfunded, and a large variety of non-news content is unwittingly affected. 

Editorial reporting is critical to our collective safety and well-being.  As an industry, we must stop contributing to the erosion of professional content and reporting which is a public good.  Relevant content including health and education should not be erased by fear-based block list practices.

The Editorial Endeavor aims to rectify these poor targeting practices.  This consortium exists to support and educate brands and the broader advertising industry on their larger social responsibility and the best approach forward.  We can do better together. 

The Editorial Endeavor is committed to promoting premium, brand-safe editorial content through broadly adopted targeting solutions. Brands can easily activate these solutions ensuring key reach while maintaining strong messaging alignment.