Advertisers demand definitive answers from digital giants

Annual Cannes event highlights deepening scepticism

The top hitters in media and advertising descended on the beaches of southern France, lounging on yachts as the sun sparkled on the cerulean water of the French Riviera.

They networked and cut deals at parties in chic hotels — the type where rooms cost $500 (Dh1,836) a night. But even in paradise, it did not take long for conversations at the annual industry conference to inevitably turn to the frustrations of the advertising world.

Since the previous Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, marketers have grappled with inadvertently funding intentionally madeup news, hate sites, and racist and terrorist-related videos on YouTube. They have been targeted on social media by partisan consumer groups based on where they place their ads.

Be responsible

And they are demanding more transparency and accountability from digital platforms, especially Facebook and Google, which continue to dominate the online ad market.

“I’m hypersensitive right now,” said Kathleen Hall, Microsoft’s corporate vice-president for global advertising and media. “As a marketer you always think about risk, but it wasn’t necessarily the first thought. “I think now you have to be much more sensitive to the idea of risk and how anything might be construed as a political statement or endorsement.”

The notion of “brand safety”, the industry term for ensuring that ads do not show up on or adjacent to objectionable content, remained a concern of executives. Kristin Lemkau, chief marketing officer of JPMorgan Chase, said during a discussion that Chase had yet to return to YouTube, which faced an advertiser exodus in the spring after ads for brands such as AT&T were discovered on videos promoting hate speech and terrorism.

Hall said that in today’s polarised media environment, people are “judging and assuming your values are represented by your media placement.”

Several advertisers said they were taking a harder line with such platforms, although they were eager to continue working with them. Google and Facebook, in particular, are trying to assuage advertisers’ concerns around objectionable content.

It’s all about the reach

Others are more concerned with creating standards for determining how effectively ads reach people online and being able to compare metrics across platforms — basically, what a Facebook video view is worth versus an ad viewed on Snapchat.

Still, while marketers are more outspoken, the giant online advertising platforms continue to reign supreme — and attract hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing.

“The duopoly continues,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the world’s biggest ad group, referring to Google and Facebook.

“There’s been all these challenges — consumer brand safety, what I call political brand safety with terrorist-type stuff, fake news, fraud, transparency. But I don’t think that anything has happened as yet that we’ve seen of great significance in terms of altering the patterns of spend.”

Advertisers are eyeing ways to work with Amazon.

I think now you have to be much more sensitive to the idea of risk and how anything might be construed as a political statement or endorsement or issue-based support.” Kathleen Hall | Microsoft VP for global advertising and media