Sunday, Jun 26, 2022 • 17min
SP Highlights: Disinformation and Ad Accountability w/ Claire Atkin Of Check My Ads
Play Episode
Brand suitability and brand safety are topics that we're never gonna get away from in any aspect of podcasting. Or advertising in general. And that's why I was so excited to have Claire Atkin https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-atkin/ co-founder of Check My Ads https://checkmyads.org/ on the show earlier this year.
Personally, as an individual, I support their movement and contribute to it every single month. I highly recommend listening to this episode, subscribing to their newsletter, and throwing a few bucks towards the only non-profit ad watchdog in existence.
Credits:
Original full episode available at: https://soundsprofitable.com/episode/2/13 https://soundsprofitable.com/episode/2/13
Audio engineering by Evo Terra http://linkedin.com/in/evoterra
Executive produced by Evo Terra https://twitter.com/evoterra of Simpler Media https://simpler.media/
Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron https://www.timcameronmusic.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Read more
Talking about
Speakers
(2)
Bryan Barletta
Claire Atkin
Transcript
Verified
Bryan Barletta
00:01
Hey Bryan Barletta Sounds Profitable here. After coming back from two conferences in Europe announcing our first ever event for our sponsors on the Tuesday of podcast movement in
Dallas
this year and prepping for our first two public research reports with my new partner Tom Webster, I realized that I fully exhausted our backlog of recorded podcast episodes at the worst possible time.Share
00:25
But with the influx of new subscribers to the newsletter and podcasts, I realized now was the perfect time to highlight four amazing episodes from this season of Sounds Profitable: Ad Tech Applied that I'm positive you'll love.
Share
00:38
Oh, and if you'd like to learn more about our free and live stream research presentations in June and August or attending our sponsored event, check out the episode description below.
Share
00:49
Brand suitability and brand safety are topics that we're never going to get away from in any aspect of podcasting or advertising in general and that's why I was so excited to have Claire Atkin co founder
Check My Ads
on the show earlier this year.Share
01:04
This episode called disinformation and add accountability is a great listen and I personally, as an individual support their movement and contribute to it every single month. I highly recommend listening to this episode, subscribing to their newsletter, and throwing a few bucks towards the only nonprofit ad watchdog in existence.
Share
Claire Atkin
01:25
So my name is Claire Atkin and I co-founded
Check My Ads
with Nandini Jammi
and we uncover the economic relationship between hate speech and disinformation and the ad exchanges that send them ads and money.Share
Bryan Barletta
01:44
I love that. Well I want to ask a quick question on that when you uncover that and you you make it visible to everybody in the space, your goal is just to point out that it's happening right? Like you're saying like this ad is on this piece of information and then you're making it available for them to decide what they do next, right?
Share
Claire Atkin
02:00
That's right. Every major ad exchange really has a policy that says they only work with premium publishers. They don't send ads and add money to publishers that promote violence or
COVID-19
disinformation or what have you.Share
02:17
They don't adhere to their own policies. And so when we point this out, usually the ads get dropped or the publishers get dropped.
Share
Bryan Barletta
02:26
What I really like about that is you're taking the public response that these companies have said, they say, "These are our standards" and you're taking the advertisers responses saying, "This is what we want to be associated with". And you're just pointing out that this content with examples doesn't align with what anybody has publicly said.
Share
02:43
And then you kind of turn it over for them. And so far it seems that everybody who has engaged with it has realized the mistake and realized that the partners that they're choosing to work with might not be scrutinizing the inventory as well as they can.
Share
02:56
And we're kind of seeing a big change in that we're seeing the reality that publishers can't or shouldn't be able to automatically sign-up to just receive money, a human needs to vet that against their policies.
Share
03:09
Ad tech can help a little bit by saying like what category of scrutiny you need to put into it. But overall human has to kind of looked through it. So my first big question is what should buyers, publishers and ad tech companies each be held responsible for in that advertising ecosystem?
Share
Claire Atkin
03:26
So there's a chain of command between the advertiser and where the publisher gets the ad. And that chain of command loosely goes like advertiser agency, ad exchange and then the publisher. And our general advice to buyers is don't trust anyone along that media supply chain, don't trust the agency, don't trust the ad exchange, don't trust the publisher to maintain their own publisher standards.
Share
03:58
You have to keep an eye everywhere along the supply chain. And that's why we called our company,
Check My Ads
.Share
04:06
It's because we need you to check your ad campaigns yourself, get those log-level files, remove the personal information. We don't want anyone tracking anyone else, but see where your ads have gone and identify the websites that are brand unsafe for you. Maybe even go so far as to build an inclusion list and make sure to have brand safety guidelines. So those brand safety guidelines there there so that you can communicate what is and is not appropriate use of your ad campaign down the chain of command.
Share
04:39
When those brand safety guidelines are not adhered to. If you've communicated them clearly, that is your cue to demand refunds.
Share
Bryan Barletta
04:47
Yeah. Or stop working with those partners, all of those things. You're, what you're saying when you say don't trust them is you're saying you need to audit it yourself. You should be working with partners that provide you the transparency and the ability to double-check or check your ads where they're placed appropriately.
Share
05:03
Those partners can help facilitate it. An agency can get you spend across way more than you might be able to do internally. An ad exchange might be able to get you out of price you want or at targeting you want. That's all fine.
Share
05:14
But what you're saying is you can't just trust these people in the sense of like: handshake, they're going to do what's in your best interest, because you're one of many clients for them and there's no reason why you shouldn't have visibility into it. This belief that if you know exactly where they're buying, you'll just go circumvent them and spend directly.
Share
05:34
That fear isn't real because they could have done that from the start by just not working with you and going to find those publishers through basic research that's probably cheaper. So this is about visibility and holding people to standards and holding them accountable for when you spend money with them.
Share
05:50
I love that.
Share
Claire Atkin
05:51
Exactly. And so what can agencies do? Well agencies in their turn, they don't want their clients to be upset. So how can they make sure that their clients ads are not funding hate speech and disinformation at a time when we are in a disinformation crisis?
Share
06:07
So the first thing that I tell agencies is you have to understand that disinformation works in networks. This is not a page-by-page decision. This is not a website-by-website decision.
Share
06:20
You have to make network-by-network decisions. That is to say if
Charlie Kirk
is on charliekirk.com
and humanevents.com, you can't just take off charlieKirk.com.
You also have to look at where else he writes, where else he is prominent, what other companies publishers that he owns.Share
06:40
So the first thing is to get a brand safety specialist onboard who understands disinformation because it's not super easy, I understand that. But there are some key pieces of knowledge that they must have so that you can not only speak to your client but also get the job done appropriately.
Share
07:01
And then the second thing is maybe start to move clients away from real-time bidding because the system is not working very well in this particular way. And that's an opportunity to be creative, again, I think it's part of a larger conversation to have sort of bigger picture. But it's an exciting one. It's a creative one and it's what agencies were meant to do.
Share
Bryan Barletta
07:22
Yeah. I think that we've been lazy as an advertising industry relying on technology to just do as much as possible so that we can move on to the next task. And we're not even monitoring the equipment anymore. That's part of the problem. And when you say real-time bidding, I think what you mean and you can correct me if I'm wrong, you mean open marketplace, right?
Share
07:40
Programmatic is a neat workflow to make sure that you're buying exactly what you want if you do direct deals and private marketplaces. But the open marketplace means anybody who signs up to that vendor that you're buying from is eligible to get your dollars if that vendor says that everything works and that is just proving to not have as much value.
Share
07:59
That's why you're saying have an allow list from the start and say these are the places I want to be and continue expanding it instead of reactionary, removing things from a big open place where you're never going to catch.
Share
Claire Atkin
08:12
That's right. I think direct sales are still the most pragmatic way forward if you want to support journalism and if you want to stay away from things that are not going to help the ROI of your campaign.
Share
08:25
And you asked what can add tick do as well. And that, that's a really simple one for me. Like ad tech should stop working with white nationalists.
Share
08:36
Tech needs to deck needs to start to draw the line. How do they draw the line? Well, they've already started: have clear publisher policies. Be specific about what you will and will not accept into your inventory and have a clear contact email when people start to have questions.
Share
08:57
So when I contact an ad exchange and ask them why they're still funding
Charlie Kirk
or Dan Bongino
or Glenn Beck
, I want to be able to contact them easily and quickly so that I don't have to go to Twitter so that I don't have to go to whoever's running their social media, so have a clear policy, make sure to adhere to it and force your own standards and then have a feedback loop.Share
Bryan Barletta
09:28
I love all that you're, you're saying don't have white nationalists on there and I super agree with that completely. But just to like fully circle that up. What you mean is: if you have a policy not to support this type of content, you have to remove that content or even more so you should have ways to make sure it never ends up on your platform in the first place.
Share
09:47
I believe there's a network that you've talked about that is a rumble that like it's super cool with that type of content, but as an advertiser you need to know what you're buying and if that's what they're selling and they're okay with it.
Share
09:59
That sucks. That's not where I want to spend my money as a consumer, those are not the companies I want to buy products from in the future, but as long as everybody in that loop knows I'm not happy with it, but there's not, it's not the same problem you're trying to address, You're saying when someone says, we have perfectly vetted content that follows these standards and then you're seeing this garbage on there, that's the problem, because advertisers are believing that statement spending money with them. And you're pointing out saying like, "Hey, this isn't true and like kind of a child could have vetted that", and proven that, right?
Share
Claire Atkin
10:33
That's right. If you say that you never work with publishers who promote violence, don't work with publishers who incited an insurrection.
Share
Bryan Barletta
10:41
Yeah, that's, that's pretty clear cut right there.
Share
10:45
And you mentioned working with a brand safety specialist, you know, we'll put it in the episode details if you have any links to it. Is there, like outside of
Check My Ads
? Obviously this is stuff that you do. Is there anybody else out there that you can point to? How do people find out more about this? Is this a career path that people should start exploring?Share
11:03
Because the two of you have built this into something really awesome, but there's room, I mean, there's people on Twitter that engage with you and help hunt this stuff down to make this visible. So people aren't funding all of this, Is this something that we're going to see expand in the future?
Share
Claire Atkin
11:17
Yes, we will be expanding into training and education simply because we are desperate to welcome as many people as will come into the tent where we understand how to draw a line. So the very first thing that I would suggest is to sign up for Branded, which is our newsletter to checkmyads.org/branded. And that's the place where we have these discussions.
Share
11:43
We're putting out more and more information as time goes on. We are right now hiring in research in editorial. We are going to be increasing the amount of content that we put out, not for content sake, but because there are so many stories to tell and so many ways to understand how disinformation is still being funded by the ad tech system.
Share
12:06
Our mission is to defund disinformation entirely from this system and we're going to need everyone on board.
Share
Bryan Barletta
12:15
I love that. It's it's so cool because I think that, you know, the three of us have a similar experience that we were in all these roles where we saw these things and we pointed them out and everyone's just like, "Just kick it down the line, right? Like you can't fix it. It's big machine, that's how the industry works". And it feels like in the last few years, a bunch of us said, "No, we need to talk about this".
Share
12:37
Maybe everybody's gonna ignore it or a bunch of people are but enough people will hear about it that they want to join fixing these spaces because there's value in them, right? We still need companies need to be able to advertise to grow as a business, small businesses, especially in these things. They're the ones hurt incredibly by this because they don't have the power to fight against this stuff.
Share
12:58
So it's it's really cool to see not only that the work that you've done, but that you're working to educate people right? As a nonprofit. You want as many people with this mindset with this skill set out there changing the ecosystem for the better. And I really applaud that it's very cool to see thanks.
Share
Claire Atkin
13:20
We want more people to be able to draw the line. And I know you work in podcasting and podcasts are featured prominently in media this week because we're starting to have that conversation very publicly Neil young and everyone who supports a free and fair democracy and health information that can save lives is taking a stand against
COVID-19
disinformation on Joe Rogan's
podcast.Share
13:50
Now that is a huge deal of course. And we're here because podcasting is a central force of our town square.
Share
14:02
It is a place where we are having cultural communication, cultural conversations about important topics and it feels intimate and it feels trustworthy. And if you're advertising on podcasts where information is being shared, that is going to lead to harm, to violence into discrimination. That is bad.
Share
Bryan Barletta
14:24
Yeah, no, I agree with you. And so what's your general podcasting is so different as a format, but it's so intimate and everybody laughs when we say that. But it is, it's in your ear. People are listening to this right now, there are focused to it in a way that an article isn't gonna get across them.
Share
14:43
So podcasting has tons of problems. The same way blogging does the same way the ad tech space does. What's like the one thing that you would tell the podcasting industry to prioritize to get ahead of this so that they're not seeing as many of the issues as we're seeing in the rest of the disinformation space?
Share
Claire Atkin
15:02
I want to give you like the technical details of what I think we need to do. But honestly, I mean, you know, Brian that podcasting is led by people who are generally white, people who are generally men.
Share
15:14
And what we need for the entire podcast industry to do is to take a stand and say, "No, we will not flirt with white nationalism. We will not flirt with misinformation disinformation for the purpose of discourse for the purpose of having a debate".
Share
15:32
We are sick of hearing that it's worth platforming people who want to hurt minorities, who want to spread chaos for the sake of the conversation.
Share
15:46
That is a bad faith understanding of what we need right now while anti democratic forces are rising, the podcasting world has to take a stand.
Share
Bryan Barletta
15:57
I agree with you on that and if it was all for the debate for all the discourse then those would be ad-free feeds right? Like in that situation, if they were like that's the problem, these people have keyed on to something that monetize as well.
Share
16:11
The ads that these people sell even host read work very well and that shows that this is not necessarily what they believe it's a business and that business is dangerous and harmful to not just the country but to the world and podcasting has a real opportunity to get ahead of it.
Share
16:30
So I thank you so much for your time on this. I really hope that everybody in the podcast world subscribes to branded, donates to
Check My Ads
, Sounds Profitable. Absolutely does donate to Check My Ads
, I'm such a big supporter of it and I really am going to make it a priority to make sure that more people in the podcast space know about you too and all of the things you do because this is not specific to any one media format, but podcasting has the opportunity to get ahead of it and make real change quickly because there is a lot of problems in podcasting with this type of content.Share
17:06
Thank you so much for joining.
Share
Claire Atkin
17:08
Thanks Brian.
Share
Bryan Barletta
17:08
Thank you for listening to this conversation for the full original episode which includes my conversation with my co-host, Arielle Nissenblatt. Please check out the whole episode in the episode details.
Share
17:25
Sounds Profitable: Ad tech Applied will be on break until mid-July, but we're really excited to bring you a whole slew of new content and guests.
Share
17:32
In the meantime, check out the download our Thursday podcast that covers everything you need to know about the business of podcasting and why it should matter to you in 10 minutes or less.
Share
17:41
And if you haven't already, please subscribe to the sounds profitable newsletter at sounds profitable.com.
Share
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.36.0
Bryan Barletta
Claire Atkin