05/12/2021
NewsGuard & GumGum Partner To Stop Advertising Dollars From Funding Misinformation
GumGum will now have access to NewsGuard’s journalist supported publisher ratings to ensure advertisers don’t appear on misinformation websites
(New York, NY and Santa Monica, CA, May 12, 2021) GumGum, a global technology and media company specializing in contextual intelligence, today announced its partnership with NewsGuard, which provides an added layer of protection for brands against advertising on websites that publish misinformation.
As misinformation continues to rise, advertisers are more cautious than ever as to where their ads are being placed. GumGum’s partnership with NewsGuard expands its commitment to ensure that every ad is placed in a safe environment. GumGum’s supply side publisher inventory will now incorporate NewsGuards site ratings as a supplement to GumGum’s brand safety algorithm, Verity™. GumGum will use NewsGuard’s ratings to curate publisher inventory and keep ads off of sites publishing misinformation. With NewsGuard as a partner, GumGum’s clients will now have an additional layer of protection to advertise with confidence and focus on what’s really important – connecting with consumers.
“Misinformation verification is the next crucial element advertisers and publishers are desperately seeking out. Ads appearing next to misinformation can be detrimental for a brand and in turn has caused advertisers to overblock and hurt publishers ability to cover important news stories.” said Ben Plomion, Chief Growth Officer, GumGum. “We chose to partner with NewsGuard because they are journalists by trade and are committed to helping brand’s continue to confidently advertise across reliable and trustworthy news sites.”
NewsGuard’s team provides detailed ratings and 0-100 point trust scores for thousands of domains—assessing each site based on nine simple, apolitical journalistic criteria. Sites with high scores are credible, brand-safe news sites that cover even controversial topics in a fair and even handed way. Sites with low scores publish hoaxes, conspiracy theories, or other forms of unreliable news. NewsGuard data will be applied as an additional layer of protection to ensure that any content GumGum deems “positive” or “safe” content is also factual, true, and credible. For example, if GumGum deems an article about everyone getting a million dollars as positive and safe, NewsGuards data would flag it as misinformation and GumGum will block the ad.
“Advertising is a critical revenue source for publishers and we are grateful for the opportunity to work with GumGum to deliver verified news inventory that brands can confidently advertise on,” said Carter Stone, VP of Strategic Partnerships at NewsGuard. “We are excited to see GumGum take initiative and aid them in giving advertisers access to credible, trusted news inventory while avoiding ad placements on harmful misinformation websites.”
Peter Wallace, Managing Director for EMEA at GumGum, said, “The rise of fake news has been an increasing concern for some years. It was revealed in the 2019 Digital News Report that 70% of the UK population was concerned as to whether digital news content was real or fake. Trust is likely to be even lower today following the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to a surge in fake news and misinformation online. This partnership compliments our contextual capabilities perfectly, guaranteeing advertisers quality content within brand safe environments. In turn, we expect this to really help publishers open up more supply as this is the perfect remedy to blunt keyword blocking.”
GumGum is one of the largest advertising platforms in the world, ranked 12th largest by header bidding coverage, working with 1000+ major brands and 1200+ leading publishers. For over a decade, GumGum has been known for pushing the envelope in building technology that allows advertisers to reach consumers in the most effective way. GumGum is the leader in contextual intelligence through its Verity™ offering, which incorporates leading computer vision and natural language processing technology to help advertisers with the ideal content to place ads.
For more information, NewsGuard
- Matt Skibinski, General Manager, matt.skibinski@newsguardtech.com, +1 973-818-4698
- Carter Stone, VP of Partnerships, carter.stone@newsguardtech.com +1 646-637-2932
For more information, GumGum
- Email pr@gumgum.com
About NewsGuard
Launched in March 2018 by media entrepreneur and award-winning journalist Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz, NewsGuard provides credibility ratings and detailed “Nutrition Labels” for thousands of news and information websites. NewsGuard rates all the news and information websites that account for 95% of online engagement across the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Italy. NewsGuard products include NewsGuard, HealthGuard, and BrandGuard, which helps marketers concerned about their brand safety, and the Misinformation Fingerprints catalog of top hoaxes.
NewsGuard rates each site based on nine apolitical criteria of journalistic practice, including whether a site repeatedly publishes false content, whether it regularly corrects or clarifies errors, and whether it avoids deceptive headlines. It awards weighted points for each criterion and sums them up; a score of less than 60 earns a “Red” rating, while 60 and above earns a “Green” rating, which indicates it is generally reliable.
NewsGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels can be licensed by internet service providers, browsers, news aggregators, education companies, and social media and search platforms in order to make NewsGuard’s information about news websites available to their users. Consumers can access these ratings by purchasing a subscription to NewsGuard, which costs $2.95/month and includes access to NewsGuard’s browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and its mobile app for iOS and Android. The extension is available for free on Microsoft’s Edge browser through a license agreement with Microsoft, and NewsGuard’s ratings can also be accessed free through the Edge mobile browser. Hundreds of public libraries globally receive free access to use NewsGuard’s browser extension on their public-access computers to give their patrons more context for the news they encounter online. For more information, including to download the browser extension and review the ratings process, visit newsguardtech.com.
About GumGum
GumGum is a global technology and media company specializing in contextual intelligence. For over a decade, we have applied our proven machine learning expertise to extract value from digital content for the advertising and sports industries. Our proprietary contextual intelligence engine uses computer vision and natural language processing technologies to scan text, images and videos when evaluating digital content. Combining our contextual advertising intelligence with proprietary high-impact ad formats, GumGum’s advertising solutions deliver industry leading efficiency, accuracy and performance.