BrandGuard

Photo: Cottonbro
Helping advertisers avoid risk from misinformation.
BrandGuard is the only humanly generated, constantly updated solution to help advertisers, agencies, and ad-tech companies make decisions adhering to their standards for advertising on credible news sites and avoiding misinformation sources.
Our team of analysts reviews thousands of news and information sites, covering 95% of online engagement in each market, to certify trustworthy news sites while flagging untrustworthy domains that spread dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories or pose as legitimate news sources.

Responsible ad placements for news—powered by human intelligence.
Powered by NewsGuard’s journalist-curated trust ratings for thousands of online news and information sources, BrandGuard provides rich data about online news sources that advertisers use to avoid ad placements on misinformation, disinformation, and untrustworthy news sources inconsistent with their brand safety standards. At the same time, BrandGuard helps advertisers identify credible, trusted news sources to include in their ad campaigns, expanding reach, lowering CPMs, and improving performance.
Brands can use NewsGuard’s data to craft custom news inclusion or exclusion lists based on their standards. Advertisers can use NewsGuard’s more than 30 data and metadata points to create filters for different categories of content, such as health misinformation, anti-vaccine hoaxes, political conspiracy theories, and other brand-unsafe or brand-unsuitable content.
Request a free inventory analysis to find out whether your ads are appearing on sites you might consider pose a reputation risk—and learn more about how NewsGuard can protect you.
Advertising using NewsGuard means:
- Saving money with campaign efficiencies: lower CPMs and improved cost-per-reach
- Increased click-through rates from highly engaged news consumers
- Sending ad revenue to quality news – instead of sites that don’t meet a brand’s standards
- Meeting corporate responsibility goals with your advertising budget
- Reaching diverse-owned media and sites that serve minority communities
Special Reports
Detailed analyses of how brands can inadvertently fund misinformation through their ad placements

Learn more about NewsGuard's partnership with Publicis
Publicis formed a group-wide partnership with NewsGuard to provide its agencies and clients with access to BrandGuard, enabling them to curate trusted news inclusion lists and misinformation exclusion lists to be used with their programmatic advertising. This tool provides Publicis clients with a constantly updated exclusion list to protect them from having their ads unintentionally fund thousands of misinformation and hoax websites.

NewsGuard's partnership with IPG helps ad agencies protect clients from misinformation
IPG Mediabrands partnered with NewsGuard to enable client teams to access NewsGuard data to improve the responsibility of their news advertising practices: curating inclusion lists of trusted news sources on which to target ads while also expanding exclusion lists to add thousands of sites spreading misinformation.

Do-Gooders Doing Bad: How Nonprofit and Government Organizations Unintentionally Fund the Misinformation Machine
NewsGuard identified 57 nonprofit and government organizations advertising on websites that traffic in misinformation, having failed to exclude them from their programmatic advertising.
Examples: BrandGuard Partners














