How TIME and Bloomberg Media are getting quality news back on the media plan

News has long been treated as a risk category in digital advertising. For many advertisers, the safest path has been to avoid it altogether or to rely on keyword blocklists that keep campaigns away from anything that looks controversial. For many advertisers, the safest path has been to avoid it altogether or rely on keyword blocklists that keep campaigns away from anything that looks controversial. 

But that approach can create a different kind of risk, causing advertisers to miss valuable audiences, block trusted journalism, or limit campaign performance. 

Quality news can offer advertisers what many media plans are trying to find: 

• Engaged audiences 

• Trusted environments 

• High-attention moments 

• Contextual relevance 

• Incremental reach 

The key challenge is how to buy quality news with more intelligence, more control, and more confidence. 

News avoidance can block valuable audiences 

In recent years, advertisers have started to see the news as too difficult or risky to navigate. Some of that caution is understandable; brands want control over where ads appear and marketers need tools that protect brand reputation. 

But broad avoidance often goes too far. Traditional brand safety practices, such as keyword blocking, can keep advertisers away from high-quality news stories that are not actually unsafe. 

Mark Howard, chief operating officer at TIME, shed light on this phenomenon with an illustrative example: “TIME’s Person of the Year coverage of Taylor Swift was flagged as unsafe by legacy verification tools because the article referenced topics such as feminism and the exclusion of women from power. The result was an article that many advertisers likely would have wanted to be near but that was treated as a risk.”

For advertisers, overblocking can reduce access to quality inventory, limit reach, and push spend away from trusted publishers into lower-quality environments. 

Jeff Green, founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, framed the issue this way: “Advertisers became reluctant to buy news as politics grew more polarizing. But the answer is not to avoid news entirely. It is to identify the news environments that are factual, less polarizing, and aligned with advertiser goals.” 

News can include everything from sensationalist clickbait to rigorous business journalism, local reporting, investigative work, podcasts, video, and premium publisher environments. A trusted platform with the technology to navigate this complex landscape can help advertisers separate the quality from the noise. 

Brand-safe does not mean news-free 

Brand safety and news avoidance are often treated as if they are the same thing. They are not. 

Shenan Reed, chief global media officer at General Motors, described how GM approaches brand-safe news with a more nuanced framework. The company has built an internal framework, partially powered by Ad Fontes Media, that allows GM to run in news channels that reach their consumers. 

The goal is not to eliminate news, but rather to define where your brand is comfortable appearing. 

For advertisers writ large, this can be an effective road map to a better way forward with news: 

• Define what suitability means for your brand 

• Distinguish factual reporting from opinionated or low-quality content 

• Use third-party signals to evaluate news quality 

• Avoid overreliance on keyword blocklists 

• Measure how quality news performs against campaign goals 

This is where tools such as News Navigator can help. It is designed to help advertisers buy high-quality news content using third-party news rating partners like Ad Fontes Media and Mobian. It helps you prioritize quality news at a more granular level, including page-level data, so you can make more informed decisions about which news inventory to buy.. It helps you prioritize quality news at a more granular level, including page-level data, so you can make more informed decisions about which news inventory to buy. 

That helps give advertisers more control without forcing you into broad avoidance, empowering you to buy the right news for your brand.

News audiences can be valuable and incremental 

Advertisers are under pressure to reach the right people more efficiently. News can play an important role in that strategy. As Reed put it, “The audience is there.” 

News can give advertisers a leg up on reach, because news audiences often over-index for the traits many advertisers care about. They can be informed, engaged, older, educated, affluent, and attentive. Local news, business news, podcasts, national news, and print all play different roles. 

Quality news environments can also create performance advantages because many advertisers have historically underinvested in them. When brands buy quality news, they can support journalism and perform well. According to Green, “Because so many advertisers have avoided news, some of that inventory can be undervalued.” 

AI makes trusted journalism more important 

AI is changing the economics of information. It is also changing the stakes for advertisers. 

As AI-generated content grows, audiences and platforms will need stronger signals of what is credible, current, and human-created. Vanessa Otero, founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media, made this point clearly: “The value on human-created content is rising now.” 

Otero also drew an important distinction between journalism and media. The internet does not lack content, but it does lack the kind of journalism that is expensive to produce and essential to a healthy information ecosystem, such as: 

• Investigative reporting 

• Local community coverage 

• War, conflict, and disaster reporting 

• Reporting that holds power to account 

• Stories about people and communities without power 

That work is expensive, as it requires journalists, editors, a reporting infrastructure that includes fact-checking, legal review, distribution, and time. It is also increasingly important as AI makes cheap content easier to produce. 

Christine Cook, chief commercial officer at Bloomberg Media, made a related point, highlighting Bloomberg’s current marketing campaign: “Behind every headline is the bottom line.” Bloomberg employs thousands of journalists globally and distributes business content across multiple platforms, including TV, streaming, events, and digital. Policy, markets, supply chains, and business decisions help shape Bloomberg’s reporting. 

Its campaign line captures why news can be so valuable for advertisers. News is not simply content around which ads appear. It is often the environment where decision-makers are trying to understand what is changing, what matters, and what action to take. 

AI may increase the need for that kind of trusted context. As answer engines and large language models influence discovery, credible journalism can become part of the source layer that helps shape what people see, understand, and trust. 

For advertisers, that helps create a dual opportunity: 

• Reach audiences in trusted, high-quality environments 

• Support the journalism that helps make the open internet credible

Better news buying requires better signals 

The future of news advertising should be based on better signals. That includes understanding the difference between: 

• Unsafe content and serious reporting 

• Opinion and factual journalism 

• Polarizing environments and balanced coverage 

• Low-quality media and high-quality news 

• Keyword risk and true contextual risk 

AI can help accelerate that shift, but only when it is used with clear advertiser objectives and quality inputs. 

Reed described AI as a way to move faster from insight to action. In programmatic advertising, decisions happen in milliseconds. Advertisers need tools that can evaluate context quickly enough to make better buying decisions in real time. 

Green connected that point to the broader potential of agentic tools. As he put it, “Agentic basically represents an API that can reason. Buying news requires nuanced reasoning so that you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” A single word or topic may look risky in isolation, but AI can understand the full context that may make it suitable, valuable, and aligned with the brand. 

AI can help advertisers stop treating news as an undifferentiated risk category and start evaluating impressions with more intelligence. 

The Sellers and Publishers 500+ also supports a broader strategy for quality media. It gives advertisers a way to access high-quality inventory across the open internet, including CTV, digital audio, web, live sports, and journalism outlets. It is designed to help you balance premium quality with scale, using criteria such as ad experience quality and supply path efficiency. 

Instead of choosing between a narrow set of private marketplace deals and the full open market, it allows you to access a more direct path to premium inventory while maintaining scale. 

Used together, solutions such as News Navigator and the Sellers and Publishers 500+ can help you: 

• Prioritize quality news content 

• Avoid low-quality or unsuitable environments 

• Reduce reliance on blunt keyword blocking 

• Improve access to premium publisher inventory 

• Support supply path efficiency 

• Scale campaigns without abandoning quality controls
   

How advertisers can buy quality news with more confidence 

Buying the best of the news starts with a more modern approach to brand suitability. 

1. Revisit your blocklists: Overly broad or outdated blocklists can keep campaigns away from valuable inventory. Advertisers should regularly review whether blocked terms still reflect actual brand risk. 

2. Define quality news for your brand: Every advertiser has different needs. Create a framework that reflects the brand’s risk tolerance, audience strategy, and business objectives. 

3. Use trusted news quality signals: News Navigator and third-party rating partners can help advertisers distinguish high-quality, factual reporting from lower-quality content, supporting more nuanced news buying while helping avoid the extremes. 

4. Balance quality with scale: The Sellers and Publishers 500+ can help you access premium inventory across the open internet while maintaining quality controls and supply path transparency. 

5. Measure outcomes: Quality news should be evaluated like any other media investment: by its ability to reach the right audience and drive outcomes. 

Supporting journalism is good for the open internet 

News is generally seen as a societal good. For advertisers, it can also be a smart media decision. 

Quality journalism reaches valuable audiences, provides trusted context, and creates moments of attention and relevance. In an AI-driven media environment, it also helps preserve the source material that consumers, brands, and platforms rely on to understand the world. 

Advertisers do not have to choose between performance and supporting journalism. With the right signals, tools, and strategy, they can do both. 

This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance. 

Jeff Green’s, Shenan Reed’s, Mark Howard’s, Vanessa Otero’s, and Christine Cook’s perspectives stem from “Business of News,” a Cannes session hosted by AdWeek and Ad Fontes Media on Tuesday, June 23, 2026.

_Source:

_{1. Aggregate campaign data from News Navigator testing on The Trade Desk’s platform.}