Who is spreading false stories, what are the main narratives and who is funding the ads next to these stories? These are the questions we aim to answer in a new intelligence report, uncovering the link between COVID-19 disinformation and digital advertising money.
The report was covered this week by Ad Exchanger and Israeli Media.
In the last 2 months we followed 1000 disinformation sites and tracked the ads they are showing. Our technology identified thousands of advertisers that are unknowingly funding these sites:
We analyzed the keywords of the disinformation stories using our semantic text models and identified groups of common narratives related to “vaccine health risks”, “false cures”, conspiracies about the virus origins and more:
The disinformation narratives are very nuanced and rapidly changing. Traditional brand safety measures such as domain blocklists and keyword blocking are good for blocking spam, adult content or violence, but hate speech and disinformation are a much bigger challenge. We acknowledge the following caveats:
- The numbers presented in this study are estimates which are hard to discern for a third party and are greatly influenced by ad serving dynamics
- While the report provides examples of specific brands and platforms, it is a widespread phenomena and in many cases the companies may have little idea where the ads are shown.
Taking action to address the fake news challenge
The goal of the report is to shed light on this phenomena and raise awareness among advertisers, digital agencies and ad networks. Eliminating the advertising incentive might be the most effective approach to reduce the spread of disinformation.
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