National World partners with Mantis to enhance brand safety and contextual offering

The partnership will help unlock advertising revenue for National World, while increasing access to brand-suitable inventory for advertisers.

National World, one of the largest and most respected news publishers in the UK, home to national titles, has announced a strategic partnership with Mantis, which uses natural language AI to deliver industry-leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. This partnership will strengthen brand safety for advertisers while enabling more precise targeting across National World’s diverse audience.

At a time when publishers are increasingly prioritising intelligent brand safety and contextual solutions, Mantis’s superior AI-driven technology enables National World to significantly expand the volume of brand-suitable inventory for advertisers. Unlike traditional blocklist-based approaches that often fail to meet the nuanced needs of audiences, Mantis uses advanced contextual intelligence to deliver more precise and reliable assessments of content safety.

“Advertisers keen to harness the huge reach opportunities our titles offer are looking for smarter ways to ensure maximum relevance and brand safety as the news cycle continually changes,” said Jade Power, Director of Digital Monetisation at National World. “Our partnership with Mantis enables us to facilitate  nimble delivery of contextual campaigns for effective and wide-ranging engagement while ensuring ads are seen beside appropriate stories for each brand. In essence, we can now provide the perfect blend of scale and suitability.” 

“This collaboration is part of a growing movement to introduce more nuance to digital ad placement,” said Ben Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis. “Forward-looking publishers such as National World are driving the industry shift away from blanket keyword blocking by embracing natural language solutions that use deep insight into the real meaning of content to inform refined ad serving. Leveraging our advanced AI-powered analysis, we allow brands to build greater awareness among key target audiences and provide vital revenue that supports the production of quality news.”

About National World

National World is a leading force in the UK's media landscape, renowned for its commitment to delivering high-quality, trustworthy content. As a premier newsbrand network, we are dedicated to providing cutting-edge advertising solutions that empower businesses of all sizes. Our focus on innovation and accessibility reshapes the way companies approach digital marketing, forging impactful connections with audiences across diverse platforms. At National World, we are not just about broadcasting the news; we are about transforming how stories are told and experienced in the digital age.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

Mantis, a leading brand safety, suitability and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers, has today released data highlighting brands that rely on outdated keyword blocklists will be blocking more than 41% of Halloween content and scary movie reviews this spooky season.

According to the findings gathered from Mantis’ network of publishers, words such as 'kill' 'blood' 'horror' 'scary' 'attack' 'death' 'terror' are amongst those on agency blocklists. While in theory, blocking ads from appearing next to articles containing these keywords avoids potentially unsafe brand environments, in reality it also cuts brands off from perfectly brand safe and suitable ad placements next to content that their target audience is actively seeking out.

For example, blocking the word “bloody” would inadvertently also block the London Dungeons Halloween “Bloody Mary” experience and all articles that have listed it as a must-see Halloween activity. Similarly, advertisers will fail to reach audiences looking to spook themselves by watching the latest Halloween blockbuster films.  With a quarter of UK shoppers considering Halloween their favourite holiday and spend projected to reach £776 million in 2024, marketers risk reducing their advertising reach during this tentpole event. As a knock-on impact, this over-blocking also severely reduces advertising income for publishers.

Mantis, which leverages advanced AI technology to understand the context in which these keywords are used, measured over 1100 articles to unveil these findings. In stark comparison to the standardised agency blocklists, only 12% of articles were categorised unsafe when using Mantis’ Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Contextual Targeting categorisation.

Cath Waller, MD of Advertising at Immediate Media, has experience of the negative impacts that blanket keyword blocklists can have on Halloween content. Immediate Media publication goodFOOD has seen a number of its pages promoting novelty Halloween cakes blocked due to phrases such as “garish bakes that ooze fake blood”, or “For a spooky fake blood effect, use berry syrup”, and “Halloween slash cake”. 

“Our Halloween content is incredibly popular with readers at this time of year, with our publications working hard to create content that inspires and grabs readers of all ages,” comments Cath. “Our readers are always looking out for creative Halloween ideas, and that so many of these articles are blocked by advertisers is incredibly frustrating. By relying solely on out-dated tech, advertisers not only harm their own ability to reach a wide range of audiences, but also stop our readers from having the best possible on-page experience. It's time for more advertisers to step up and utilise AI-powered safety solutions that more accurately assess the suitability of web pages.

Fiona Salmon, Managing Director at Mantis also commented: “With thrill-seeking consumers on the lookout for content related to Halloween traditions, events, and deals, brands aren’t just sacrificing lucrative advertising opportunities, they’re directly harming publishers. The industry has been zombie-like in its reluctance to waver from keyword blocklists, despite their obvious negative impact. It’s time for advertisers to wake up and embrace brand safety solutions that prioritise suitability without impacting performance.

Methodology 

Mantis conducted the analysis of over 1,147 Halloween-themed articles from its publisher network on October 6th using BigQuery to compare standardised agency keyword blocklists with its own AI-powered Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Contextual Targeting solutions. The study focused on keywords like 'kill' 'blood' 'horror' 'scary' 'attack' 'death' and 'terror', commonly flagged by blocklists. Articles were classified based on keyword detection and context: Green for safe content, Red for unsafe with high confidence, and Amber for potentially unsafe but below the blocking threshold.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

The partnership will help unlock advertising revenue for Netmums, while increasing access to brand-suitable inventory for advertisers.

London, 8th October 2024 – Netmums, the trusted parenting community that supports millions of families across the UK, has announced a strategic partnership with Mantis, a leading provider of AI-driven brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. This partnership will provide advertisers with enhanced brand safety measures while also unlocking new opportunities to reach its dedicated parenting audience with hyper-targeted precision.

By integrating Mantis’s contextual intelligence technology, Netmums can now offer a superior, AI-powered solution that is able to understand and categorise the sentiment and tone of specific web pages, in a human-like way, at scale. This will ensure that ads are placed within contextually relevant and brand suitable environments.

In addition to providing enhanced contextual targeting and brand suitability, advertisers on Netmums can now also access tailored audience segments. This precise and privacy-enabled audience targeting solution enables brands and marketers to reach audiences with specific interests or behaviours across the publisher’s portfolio without the need for third-party cookies. This means that even in a privacy-first world, Netmums can continue to deliver highly relevant and effective advertising solutions to brands.

“We are excited to be able to welcome Netmums to the growing number of publishers utilising our suite of solutions,” said Benjamin Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis “As more publishers are lining up to find ways to increase their yield while enhancing brand safety, it is also becoming increasingly clear to advertisers that blunt brand safety tools are no longer enough to navigate today’s digital media landscape We are proud to be able to offer a market leading AI-driven solution that helps publishers to enhance their advertising offering in a highly agile and effective way.”   

Rimi Atwal, Managing Director at Netmums, said. “Netmums is a truly 360 digital media publisher with multiple touchpoints to guide parents throughout their parenting life. Our content is constantly evolving to provide advice and expert guidance on the things that matter most to families, simultaneously offering a unique brand safe environment for advertisers to reach our highly engaged and diverse audience. We are delighted that our new partnership with Mantis will further enhance our offering and allow brands to reach our audience with even greater precision in terms of both context and brand suitability.”

About Netmums

Netmums is the parenting community you can trust to help you through the highs and lows of family life. Supportive, inclusive and always relevant, Netmums is a truly 360 digital media publisher, with multiple touchpoints to guide families throughout their parenting journey with a market-leading social audience of millions across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook and a long-running podcast and video series.

Netmums is committed to constantly evolving its content offer to provide advice and expert guidance on the things that matter most in modern family life with new strands for 2024 including Netmums Money Saving Hacks with Britain’s Coupon Kid and our new Netmums Unfiltered podcast. Netmums balances innovation with unwavering focus on offering a safe, moderated community, quality content you can trust and a profound commitment to supporting parents at every stage.

The commitment to accompanying parents through the highs and lows of parenting is underpinned by Netmums Parent Supporter Service and Drop In Clinic - the only completely free, dedicated 24/7 service, staffed by experts of its kind in the UK. For over 15 years the Parent Supporter Service has offered parents an inclusive and easily accessible way of seeking advice from qualified professionals on their biggest challenges, day and night, 365 days of the year. Netmums commitment to funding this service and the partnerships it has forged with partners like StepChange, GoodLaw and the Maternal Mental Health Alliance are integral to Netmums unique offering which sets it apart as a truly supportive parenting platform.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

The new partnership enables brands to access a highly curated marketplace of women’s sports content programmatically, at scale, across a huge network of premium publishers.

Mantis, the leading provider of brand safety and contextual advertising solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with LIBER8, a specialist digital women’s sports content and media company, to help power LIBER8 Curate, the UK’s first digital women’s sports content marketplace. Leveraging Mantis’ superior AI-driven contextual targeting technology, this collaboration will transform how brands engage with women’s sports audiences, offering precise targeting and premium content curation at scale.

Women’s sport is undeniably gaining momentum, with 39% of Gen-Z actively watching and 83% of brands planning to increase their investments. Additionally, positive sentiment towards brands supporting women’s sport is 1.4x times higher than for those investing in men’s sport.

Despite this growth, a critical gap currently exists in the digital media landscape. Coverage of women’s sports is highly fragmented across numerous digital publishers, and the lack of tagging complicates programmatic buying and targeting for brands.

LIBER8 Curate powered by Mantis addresses these challenges, by offering one point of access for brands to reach women’s sports fans at scale with granular precision. Mantis’ advanced AI technology better understands the nuances of content, enabling ads to be delivered in more contextually relevant locations. This helps to drive better results for brands in a privacy-focussed and cookie-less way.

Kim Parker, LIBER8 Founder commented: “As women’s sport continues to evolve, we are committed to looking at innovative ways in which we can help brands invest and accelerate the growth of this vertical. All the data points to women’s sport being a hugely influential platform for brands to connect with this new type of sports audience and in LIBER8 Curate we are pioneering a platform to connect with these audiences.” 

Benjamin Pheloung, Mantis General Manager commented: “Women’s sports represent a growing and passionate audience and brands are starting to take notice –  83% of Fortune 500 companies are planning to increase their spending in this area. Through our collaboration with Liber8, we’re providing brands with the tools they need to connect with this audience in a meaningful and brand-safe way. We are thrilled to be partnering with Liber8 on this first-of-its-kind initiative.” said Ben Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis.

About Liber8

Liber8 exists to grow women’s sport in media by providing intelligent, tech-driven content and commercial solutions. The platform empowers brands and agencies to support women’s sports at any stage of their journey, offering unparalleled access to curated women’s sports content and a new, highly engaged sports demographic.

About Mantis

Mantis is a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers and advertisers. Launched by Reach in 2019, the Mantis suite of solutions create an efficient, more transparent advertising ecosystem for publishers, brands, and audiences. Mantis’ suite of AI-powered tools – including Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI – provide market-leading solutions in today’s complex digital landscape. Built by a publisher to help publishers, agencies, and advertisers, Mantis is the most powerful and precise solution for creating a better advertising experience for all.

Brand safety solution provider Mantis expands its operations further into APAC, cementing its position as a leading partner for the news media

SYDNEY, September 4th 2024 – Nine, one of the largest and most respected news publishers in Australia, has announced a partnership with Mantis, which uses natural language AI to deliver industry-leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions. The collaboration will enable Nine to better protect the reputations of advertisers using Mantis’ pioneering brand safety tools. 

The strategic partnership marks a significant milestone in Mantis’ continued expansion into the APAC region, part of its wider commitment to increase its global presence and deliver its leading brand safety solutions to major publishers in every market.

As one of Australia’s most trusted news providers, Nine needs a brand safety solution that can keep up with the fast-moving news agenda. While blocklist-based brand safety solutions present challenges to news publishers due to the limitations they put on their inventory for advertisers, Mantis’ AI-driven contextual intelligence semantically understands text and media content to more effectively assess its brand safety risk. This not only ensures that brands are able to deliver ads in a safe environment, but also opens up the availability of safe content that was previously blocked by imprecise blocklist-based tools.

The partnership will also enhance the precision of ad targeting, allowing brands to reach audiences based on the content they are consuming at any given moment, in turn driving improved engagement.

Angelo Sinibaldi, Data Commercialisation and Strategy Director at Nine: “As a national news broadcaster, our broad and highly engaged audience is a key attraction for advertisers, but at the same time, it is imperative that we deliver effective brand safety. We are pleased to be able to offer brands a solution that truly understands the context and sentiment of content, enhancing both safety and targeting, as well as creating a better on-page ad experience for our readers.”

Ben Pheloung, General Manager at Mantis: “The world over, publishers are challenged by treading the line between offering effective brand safety and gaining the maximum returns from their ad inventory. Our partnership with a publisher as established and trusted as Nine highlights the effectiveness of our solutions in delivering these goals. We are incredibly pleased to be expanding our APAC operations further and look forward to bringing our solutions to even more publishers globally.”

What has had the biggest impact on brand safety in the last five years?

Covid and the pandemic have had the single largest impact on brand safety and how the advertising ecosystem views it. Firstly, because it was unknown. No industry or person had experienced anything like it before. It touched every part of our lives – sporting events, work life, our freedom to go out. Secondly, because it changed how people consumed content and shopped. Streaming services saw rapid growth and every single business, whether they were a national retailer or local bakery, had to pivot their offering to be online.

During this time, brands unsurprisingly worried about their ads being placed near news stories covering the negative impacts of the pandemic – but nearly every piece of content produced at that time made reference to covid. Putting keyphrases like ‘covid’ or ‘coronavirus’ on a blocklist would have cut brands off from a majority of news stories, many of which were completely brand suitable. This is when we began to see the conversation around brand suitability pick up steam and it was also the point I knew that we needed to rapidly develop our brand safety tech to tackle this issue.

How far do you think the advertising industry has come in shifting its attitudes to brand safety in the last five years?

With advertisers, not very far unfortunately. There’s not been a large shift away from the norm of very blunt brand safety keyword blocking and a large amount of caution remains. However, I think the industry is starting to understand the difference between safety and suitability, and this will be key.

Safety is no longer up for discussion – that’s table stakes. Slowly as an industry, we’re understanding that safety is a fixed thing – terrorism, weapons, and violence, for example, are always going to be a universal safety issue for brands. But the challenge is that this binary thinking has been mirrored onto the suitability piece as well. With suitability, there is some content that a brand would consider safe and suitable, but these articles have been blocked from advertisers due to blunt tools. A different brand however may consider that content unsafe and be happy to have it blocked. This lack of nuance or personalisation in these tools is severely impacting performance.

The Olympics highlighted this perfectly. If an athlete ‘bombed’ out, or a starter ‘pistol’ misfired, blunt safety tools would immediately block brands from appearing next to a perfectly brand safe story. One of the breakout stars of this year’s Games was Türkiye’s sharpshooter Yusuf Dikeç – but brands could have missed out on the viral moment because of the very sport he competed in being on a keyword blocklist. This has been exacerbated during the Paralympics, where over-cautious blocklists can isolate any articles that mention disabilities.

Publishers have been far more forward thinking however. More of them have adopted our technology, which is in turn generating the data to show advertisers that it's effective. But we have to move as a unit if these tools are to be effective and there needs to be more opt-in from the buy side.

What is your proudest achievement at Mantis so far?

Creating an environment during Covid where publishers could monetise their inventory in a safe way. A significant portion of news stories had, unsurprisingly, a word relating to covid in them – everything from hard-hitting reporting to news of local restaurants reopening and restrictions lifting. Being able to create a solution that stopped publishers from missing out on revenue opportunities and allowed brands to continue to effectively reach audiences was really powerful and I’m proud to have been part of that.

What has been the biggest challenge during your time at Mantis?

I think we’ve encountered the same problem most start-ups do – changing people’s minds. No one gets fired for hiring a well known business or a tool that has been in the market for a long time. So trying to shift perceptions and get people to test out our solution to see its positive impact has been a struggle at times. We’ve approached this by being as clear and transparent as possible, explaining how our solution works and why it is more effective than a simple keyword block list solution that you set up and then forget about.

As brand safety risks have evolved, how have you ensured that your solution is able to keep up?

Our solution is highly adaptable by design. It needs to be able to shift to the exact brand safety and suitability needs of each of our clients, so we are constantly updating it to keep up with the latest digital trends and potential safety issues. AI and machine learning have been key to this, constantly learning and constantly tweaking to ensure that any new nuances are taken into account.

Take for example Taylor Swift. She’s the biggest recording artist in the world, undertaking a record-breaking world tour, so advertising near related content has long been a no brainer. But when she had to cancel three shows earlier this year due to terror threats, her name may have found its way onto keyword blocklists as brands tried to avoid being next to articles around these events.

Brands cannot risk cutting themselves off from that level of reach – when many Taylor Swift articles remain brand suitable – and so our solutions are updated to ensure that advertisers could successfully navigate these events and continue to reach Taylor Swift fans in a safe and suitable way.

What role does AI play in both brand safety risks and solutions?

There is no doubt that the ever-spreading use of AI, especially generative AI, could cause brand safety issues. Already we’re seeing incredibly life-like deep fakes videos, images, and audio perforating online.

But AI is also the answer to this problem. By using tools that can better understand the nuance of content and rapidly evolve to emergent threats, marketers can tackle these new problems as they arise.

Where would you like the conversation around brand safety to be five years from now?

I’d like brands to start approaching their ad buying with the mindset of suitability, not what is or isn’t safe. As I said before, safety is not up for question at this point, but the suitability piece is what we’re really after and what I believe all sides of the ecosystem want. Unfortunately, until now the tools haven’t been available for this shift. But now we have them I want to start having suitability conversations rather than safety ones.

Making this shift happen is a different thing altogether but I believe it will happen if advertisers just start testing suitability tools and having more conversations within the industry around safety. We need to make this change swiftly and ideally within the next two years. 

The internet has, for a long time now, been where cutting edge trends – and cultures that evolve around them – are incubated and spread. While back in the 90s, this happened more slowly across disparate forums, as social media platforms have become more available and made us more connected, trends today spread like wildfire; creating new audiences, behaviours and slang.  For brands, keeping up with what's hot and what’s not can be the key to reaching younger audiences. Last summer, for example, saw every social feed and publication swamped by the cultural behemoth that was Barbie and brands were able to jump on the trend to cut through to audiences – from Pintrest’s Barbie boards to Tangle Teaser’s influencer-heavy Barbie campaign. This year “Brat Summer”, coined by singer Charlie XCX, has been trending in Google and Urban Dictionary searches, with brands leaning into its popularity, as seen by Kate Spade showcasing a “Brat Summer Starter Pack” on TikTok. While Barbie is a brand-led example and “Brat Summer” is a celebrity-led one, social platforms are also now where consumer-led, generational trends evolve, eventually feeding into the mainstream.

We might not currently be seeing premium publishers using words like “rizz” “sigma” or “skibidi” in articles other than those exploring the younger generations’ new terminology. But, as Gen Z flex their spending power, estimated to be over $450 billion globally, and the upcoming Gen Alpha start to standout as consumers in their own right – with an expected global economic footprint of $5.46tn (£4.32tn) by 2029 – the cultural semantics, evolving from social media, that impact them will need to be taken into account sooner rather than later.  

Out of the loop

Being able to rapidly pivot messaging and creative to jump onto the latest trend is one thing. But all efforts go to waste if brands’ ad campaigns don’t actually reach their target audience of outdated and imprecise keyword blocklists. On the whole, marketers are still deploying legacy brand safety tools that are unable to keep up with the latest fast moving trends and potential threats in online environments.

For an industry that is constantly looking toward The Next Big Thing, the reliance on keyword blocklists as a brand safety and suitability solution is head scratching. In today's fast-moving, context-rich and video-first online environments, these tools simply do not cut it. Not only that, but marketers often employ a ‘set up and sit back’ approach to these solutions, rarely updating them as events, trends and new slang words unfold across the web.

Every generation uses its own slang. Speaking to my 10-year-old (who now calls me “bruh”) can sometimes feel like speaking another language due to the phrases they’ve picked up from friends or the internet. These words shift and change meaning constantly, but they will likely become recognisable and used among a more mainstream audience. And brands must keep up with this if they are to keep reaching Gen Z and eventually younger demographics. There is no point crafting a perfectly calibrated campaign if your outdated blocklist cuts you off from reaching your target audience; as Gen Alpha might say, this is “skibidi ohio” (not good at all).

Take, for example, the colloquialisms that Gen Z often use online – words like ‘slay’, ‘lit, or ‘slaps’. All of these, in their traditional meaning, could find themselves on the blocklist of an over cautious brand. But to younger generations, these are all highly positive (trust me, I’ve Googled them) and could be appropriate to advertise against.

This is a problem not just for advertisers, but the whole ecosystem. It cuts off publishers from much needed revenue, stops brands being placed in premium locations, and gives customers a worse on-page ad experience. So what needs to happen to stop this cheugy (“the opposite of trendy”) state of affairs?

Getting with the times

Modern problems demand modern solutions. This is one of the major issues with blocklists – they are a legacy solution built for a different era of the internet.

For an indication of how much the landscape has changed, look no further than the rise of video – specifically short form video. Its spread online has been rapid, especially thanks to platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. This has been reflected in the continuing increase in video ad budgets by brands, with spend in this area seeing a 7.8% boost in the last quarter alone amongst UK advertisers.

While advertisers are right to worry about brand safety, the lack of nuance that blocklists offer is harming their ability to reach consumers, and ultimately their ROI. It’s time that marketers embraced solutions that were as agile and fast-evolving as the internet – and language – itself.

AI-powered brand safety solutions are able to more effectively read the context and sentiment of content, whether text, still image, audio, or video. These solutions are always evolving, with the constantly updating definitions of brand safety that can be rapidly tweaked in line with unfurling events and trends. Brands using these tools can ultimately continue to have a strong defence without cutting off potential ad slots.

At the same time, these solutions are underpinned by the guidelines outlined by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). This ensures standardised definitions around brand safety issues, as well as a shared language that all players can harness.

As one trend fizzles out, another springs into life. Keeping up with exactly what the latest fads are is hard enough personally, but for brands it can be the difference between reaching your audience, or being cut off by an imprecise keyword blocklist. Marketers must embrace forward-thinking solutions that can more effectively read the nuance and connotations of content if they are to truly maximise their ad spend.

Ten years from its inception, Amazon Prime Day continues to drive revenue across the retail landscape. With consumer spend increasing year-on-year during the event, competition for attention is fierce. It is critical that advertisers reach consumers with highly relevant products and offers at speed and scale, all the while prioritising brand safety and suitability. However, the greatest gains are to be made by those who can attract and retain consumers. For premium publishers, our data shows that AI-generated recommendations offer the potential to increase conversions by 37%, whilst still enhancing the user experience.

Link to full article here: https://advertisingweek.com/four-factors-for-success-during-prime-day-2024-and-beyond/

With ongoing back and forth on a decision, this announcement isn't a complete surprise and we know many will be glad to delay change a little longer, to ensure enhanced privacy measures are fit for purpose and not rushed.

Despite some specifics remaining uncertain, Google’s update does not alter the direction of travel towards a more privacy-conscious landscape, something Mantis is well-prepared for, thanks to our signed-in users and established IDs. Advertisers must continue their trajectories towards a cookieless future – or at least, one where their impact is diminished.

With regulatory bodies such as the ICO still discussing the unsuitability of cookies, and with the exact nature of Google’s Privacy Sandbox remaining unclear, let’s not discount another twist in the cookie saga. This latest development benefits the ecosystem by preventing the implementation of inadequate solutions (like FLoC, FLEDGE or Topics), and enabling meaningful conversations with advertisers about embedding contextual advertising and its performance advantages.

Continuing to implement contextual tools and first party data strategies should be an ongoing priority for advertisers looking to reach their target audiences in an effective way.

View the full article here: https://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2024/07/24/cookie-deprecation-is-dead-what-should-the-industry-do-now/

Nearly half (45%) of Euro 2024 final coverage across Reach publications was blocked from receiving advertising, having been wrongfully deemed “not brand safe”.

That is according to Mantis, a brand-safety and contextual ad solutions provider initially launched as part of Reach in 2019.

Mantis found that brands opting to keyword-block terms like “shot”, “shoot”, “shoot-out” and “attack” — likely to avoid having ads placed against news reports of violent conflicts — missed out on advertising against Euro football matches and negatively impacted publisher revenues.

It similarly found that 56% of Reach articles published around England’s semi-final match against the Netherlands were also blocked by advertisers using such keywords. According to Mantis, this amounted to 174 brands blocking those pages from advertising.

Mantis was unable to immediately provide an estimate of how much Reach lost out on by having a large proportion of its articles blocked, citing a longer turnaround for analysing the downstream business impacts.

“It is worryingly common when brands rely on a blanket blocklist of keywords in the attempt to deliver brand-safe advertising,” Mantis managing director Fiona Salmon told The Media Leader.

“While there is a need for brands to actively avoid association with potentially controversial or damaging articles, the keyword blocklist approach frequently results in inventory that is contextually relevant, and safe, being blocked. This not only negatively impacts publisher revenue, but also reduces brand exposure to target audiences reading suitable and safe content.”

Salmon called the issue of keyword-blocking “particularly prevalent” with sports reporting because of the common overlap of language used in sport and in more controversial stories.

Other keywords commonly blocked in relation to sport coverage include “crashed” and “crashing”, in reference to a team exiting a tournament; “attack”, “attacker” and “attacking”; “disastrous” as in a poor performance; and “steal” as in stealing the ball or stealing the show.

In an interview with The Media Leader earlier this year, World Media Group CEO Jamie Credland singled out keyword-blocking as the most significant problem facing publishers even in an era of uncertainty brought by developments in generative AI and changes to audience acquisition via search and social media.

“The biggest challenge is advertisers or marketers who are shying away from election or war coverage, who are perhaps using keyword blocklists in an indiscriminate way and may not even be aware of it,” Credland said.

He added that the problem is not new but has worsened over time, with brands and media agencies increasingly erring on the side of caution out of fear of sparking controversy and backlash.

Olympics another opportunity
The upcoming Olympic Games, which begin in Paris on 26 July, offer another opportunity for brands to advertise against high-traffic sport content.

However, Salmon warned that publishers “are already experiencing a huge impact on Olympics content” because many advertisers “inexplicably” still have “Paris” placed on blocklists because of the 2015 ISIL terrorist attacks in the French capital.

“There must be a more serious overhaul of brand-safety solutions if advertisers, brands and agencies are to stop missing out on inventory that is both safe and contextually relevant,” she said, adding that blocklists’ “lack of nuance and agility are seriously hurting publishers too”.

As Euro 2024 rapidly approaches its climax and tensions rise with England set to meet Spain in the final this weekend, we can reflect on a number of standout performances from individual players, stunning comebacks, well-drilled teams and innovative brands. 

It's certainly been a tournament to remember for a number of reasons; not least of these is the number of own goals. With the tally currently standing at 10, we are only one short of the all-time record of 11 set at Euro 2020. 

The most calamitous own goal of all, though, may have been notched up by the advertising industry. Following England’s semi-final showdown against the Netherlands, new Mantis data reveals 56% of Reach articles published around the match would have been blocked by advertisers using keywords ‘shot’, ‘shoot’ and ‘attack’. The result? A missed opportunity for the 174 brands blocking those pages and a negative impact on published revenue. 

Blanket blocklists don't guarantee brand safety

With a bumper summer of sport – the Euros, Wimbledon, the Olympics – already underway, many consumers are searching for sports-related content from trusted sources such as premium publishers. Ahead of Sunday's football final, millions will be searching for stats, analysis, previews and other content as they seek to enhance their enjoyment of what has been an absorbing and enthralling tournament. 

But brands using blanket blocklists are missing out on inventory that is not just perfectly safe, but also contextually relevant. And for those that include football fans among their target audiences, turning down the opportunity to connect with consumers in such an environment just doesn’t make sense. While the headlines around penalty shootouts, France's misfiring attack and Scotland crashing out of the tournament have brought this issue into sharp focus, it highlights a wider problem that, still, needs to be addressed if brands want to make their own comeback.  

It’s not all about football

The recent General Election is another case in point. Many reports have included words such as 'disastrous', for example, a term that commonly appears on ad blocklists. Looking further back, the Covid pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests highlighted issues with overzealous tools and extensive keyword blocklists. But it seems some brands, frustratingly for publishers, haven't updated their blocklist strategy; our data shows that leading supermarkets are still regularly missing out on brand-safe advertising inventory, by including phrases such as ‘supermarket’ and ‘bleach’ in their blocklists.

Brand safety is rightly a concern for marketers that don't want their company or products associated with controversial and contentious subject matters. But their default keyword blocklists don't recognise nuance. 

In today’s fast moving online landscape, these tools are no longer fit for purpose. The 'if in doubt, leave it out' approach can reduce the reach of advertising and see premium publishers missing out on revenue and the chance to serve highly relevant ads to their hard-won audience. Adding further salt to the wound is the fact that the high quality of content on these sites is likely to boast increased user dwell time and engagement, making the blanket blocklist approach even more wasteful. 

It's time for advertisers to update their playbook and address brand safety in a different way. While they still need a strong defence in place, they need a strategy that can take advantage of every chance to reach their audience in premium, relevant environments. 

This involves adopting solutions that don't rely heavily on blocklists, but that actually understand the true context and sentiment of any webpage, rapidly and at scale. Using the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) guidelines as a basis, brands can harness tools that allow them to more effectively place their ads in high quality and contextually appropriate locations. 

We at Mantis have seen this in action. Brands using Mantis brand safety and contextual targeting in the Euros in our platform have achieved up to a 724% increase on their usual CTRs, by eliminating a blanket blocklist of phrases such as “killing”. This has opened up advertising inventory on safe, premium content, including this article in the Mirror titled: “England fans single out Three Lions star for 'killing them' during Switzerland clash”.

They think it's all over

We might be about to call full-time on Euro 2024 and Wimbledon, but there's still plenty more sport to come this summer. As we look towards the Summer Olympics, with reporters covering up to 32 sports across the event, there is the real opportunity for advertisers and publishers to take advantage of the increased traffic to premium news sites during this time. However, with the keyword Paris remaining on blocklists following the 2015 bombings in the city, it is already having a huge impact on Olympics content, highlighting the need for quick action. Brands that want to retain their cutting edge and publishers seeking to maximise revenues need to show legacy blocklists the red card. Instead, they must make solutions that genuinely understand the nuance and context of a webpage their star player.

Mantis’s AI-driven contextual technology will significantly increase volume of inventory available to Immediate’s advertisers.

Immediate, home to trusted brands that people love, which reach more than a third of UK adults, has announced a technology partnership with Mantis, a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider. This partnership will provide Immediate’s customers with industry-standard brand safety measures and unlock content that was previously inaccessible to advertisers.

Whereas many blocklist-based brand safety solutions fall short of Immediate’s needs — particularly for its special interest brands — Mantis leverages AI-driven contextual intelligence to accurately and efficiently gauge brand safety through semantic understanding of text and media content.

By utilising Mantis’s technology, Immediate will also be able to provide bespoke contextual audiences which can be applied across the entirety of its properties and content, regardless of whether users are identifiable or third-party cookies are available. These audiences can be further refined thanks to the extensive customisability of Mantis’s solutions.

In addition to significantly increasing the volume of monetisable inventory for Immediate’s brands, Mantis’s technology is more performant than alternatives as most processing occurs at the point of page publication rather than user interaction. Reduced processing load also results in lower emissions, aligning with Immediate’s sustainability commitments.

“We partnered with Mantis because its technology is built by publishers for publishers, which gave us the confidence that they would understand both our needs and the needs of our customers,” said James Florence at Immediate. 

“Immediate has had an enormous amount of success with its first party data solution, having been an early adopter. By adding contextual and sentiment data from Mantis into the heart of the product offering, we hope to continue to lead the market, offering effective, innovative solutions to our customers. Allowing them to fairly support the publishing industry and solve addressability challenges at the same time,” said Matthew Rance at Immediate.

“Our partnership with Immediate Media demonstrates that AI-driven contextual technology can solve two of the biggest challenges facing digital publishers: brand safety and cookieless targeting,” said Benjamin Pheloung at Mantis. “With more brand-safe inventory and more targetable users, Immediate will be able to boost the scale and reach of its customers’ campaigns without harming the on-page experience, all while utilising our low carbon footprint products.”

About Immediate:

Immediate, home to trusted brands that people love, own and operate to some of the biggest and well-known consumer brands in the UK, including Radio Times, Good Food, Nutracheck, HistoryExtra and BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine.

Our trusted, quality content reaches 40 million people a month across digital, print, video, podcasts, apps, live events, tools and services.

 We are a purpose-driven business, to bring our audiences joy by helping everyone do what they love, creating content and experiences to inspire our audience’s passions in food, wellness, gardening, history entertainment, and beyond.

With over 1.4 million active subscribers across print and digital, we are the UK’s leading publisher by subscriptions. Immediate is the market leader in many of the sectors we operate in, including food, gardening and children’s publishing.

With offices in London, Bristol and Nottingham, Immediate was named Best Digital Consumer Publishing Company at the 2024 AOP (Association of Online Publishers) Awards, with Immediate’s commercial team picking up Sales Team of the Year. 

Mantis, a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers, advertisers, and agencies, has announced Fiona Salmon as its new Managing Director. Starting her role on the 17th of June, Fiona will take responsibility for accelerating growth across the UK and Europe, while overseeing streamlined business operations and prioritising sustainability at the core of Mantis activity.

This appointment marks the latest step in a rapid development journey for Mantis. As part of its mission to fuel greater value for all digital media players, the company is striving to achieve global expansion that will enhance access to its multi-service, context-based solutions. Using her extensive expertise in cultivating quality media networks, Fiona will play a key role in driving greater collaboration with premium publishers and extending product distribution. In addition, Fiona’s proven sustainability credentials will see her incorporating this into the Mantis business, bringing benefits to client and the wider industry

With over 20 years of media experience, Fiona holds an array of knowledge covering digital innovation, insight-driven advertising, and data monetisation. During her decade-long tenure at Vibrant Media, Fiona’s understanding of publisher priorities gained from past roles at Trinity Mirror, Bauer, and News International proved highly valuable in building a global publisher network of multi-format inventory. She joins Mantis after leading UK operations at ad tech firm 1plusX and serving as Global Vice President of Partnerships and Sustainability Lead for Captify.

Founded by Reach Plc, Mantis is a smart suite of solutions designed to make online advertising simple, secure, and more effective. Its intelligent portfolio of tools — including brand safety, contextual targeting, recommendations, and natural language AI — aims to support engaging campaigns that deliver better results for media owners, buyers, and audiences.

“Fiona’s diverse experience makes her the perfect fit for a company sitting at the intersection of media, technology, and advertising,” says Terry Hornsby, EVP and Founder of Mantis. “Her skills in fostering strategic partnerships will be a vital asset as she takes the helm of our UK operations, and we look forward to seeing her play an integral part in driving ongoing growth.”

“Joining the Mantis team offers a unique and exhilarating opportunity to shape the future of the open web and protect quality journalism through supporting publishers. “Mantis is already raising the bar on digital experiences, with publishers benefitting from an increase of over 20% more monetisable inventory, a 73% increase in accuracy of contextual identification and an average increase of 42% in ctr performance. I feel privileged to play an integral role in furthering the businesses scope and impact,” says Fiona. “Mantis’ focus on sustainability through driving efficiencies across the ad ecosystem and offering powerful products with a low carbon footprint is also impressive, and I’m going to keep this high on the agenda.”

Sport, in one form or another, will be almost inescapable this summer. While one-off tournaments such as the UEFA European Championships and the Paris Olympics are the headline-grabbing events, there truly is something for everyone.

From Wimbledon to the T20 Cricket World Cup and the Copa America Finals, even the most avid fan will struggle keeping up with every kick, leap, tee-off, or innings this summer.

For brands, these events are the perfect opportunity to reach a wide audience of highly engaged consumers at scale. We have come a long way since sport’s first sponsorship deal which saw marathon runners handed Oxo drinks during the 1908 Olympic Games in London to fuel their efforts.

Today, with brands reaching avid sports fan across a range of channels as they support their favourite teams and athletes, advertising has become a key part of any tournament experience.

However, in such high stress and potentially frenzied atmospheres, brands can easily find themselves near content that would hinder their chances of reaching their audience.

The risk of the game

During the 2020 UEFA European Championships, superstar striker Cristiano Ronaldo reached over the desk he was sitting at to grab the bottles of Coca Cola in front of him. Instead of taking a sip, he pushed them out of the frame of the cameras, grabbed a bottle of water, held it up and said “water!” to the global press.

For Coca Cola, one of the tournament’s main sponsors, this snub was the opposite of what it would have wanted from their ad spend. Indeed, its share price fell by 1.6% in the aftermath.

While this level of negative ad placement won’t happen to many brands, the truth is that these sporting events present just as many pitfalls as they do opportunities. Negative news stories around these competitions are nothing new, and international news often seeps into these environments.

The Russian Olympic team, for example, has been banned following both a doping scandal and the country's invasion of Ukraine, while the lead up to the 2022 World Cup saw host nation Qatar’s human rights violations brought up regularly in the press.

Once tournaments start, the risk of brand safety issues only hightens. Just as the outcome of a 100 metre sprint can change in a split second, the narrative around these events can shift rapidly, with media outlets and social media streams quickly picking up negative stories. For example, in the fallout of the 2021 UEFA Euros final loss, a number of England players were racially abused on social media, with the story being picked up by all major news outlets.

These fast moving events demand fast moving tools – but far too often advertisers are left reliant on outdated safety solutions.

Shuffling the defence

Keyword block lists have, for many years, been the first line of defence for advertisers against potential brand safety issues. However, in today’s fast moving online landscape, these tools no longer cut it. Their blunt approach not only risks harmful ad placements, but can reduce the reach of ad spend.

For example, if a controversy erupted around a player within a football team, marketers will need to react quickly to stay away from coverage of this player. But blocking their name could also cut off advertisers from perfectly safe content – such as match reports.

For this modern problem a modern solution is needed – this is where AI can prove pivotal. AI-powered solutions, such as Mantis Brand Safety, better ascertain the true context and sentiment of any webpage, rapidly and at scale.

These solutions also give advertisers greater control over their specific brand safety needs. Mantis Brand Safety is aligned with Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) guidelines to maintain rigorous standards and allow marketers to customise the solution to their brand safety needs.

Playing to the crowd

In most sports, one of the keys to success is precision. Whether it's keeping your tennis serve inside the court by millimetres, leaving the blocks on the split-second the starter pistol goes, or nestling a football in the top corner, success can rest on finding moments of quality within the finest of margins.

For a successful summer of sports, advertisers must take this approach and harness tools that allow them to more effectively place their ads in high quality and contextually relevant locations. Mantis Curate provides marketers with access to trusted and premium publishers that have been uniquely created to ensure maximum contextual relevance.

These tools allow marketers to weave themselves into the narrative of the tournament itself, following specific teams or athletes as their journeys unfold – while safe in the knowledge that negative content will be avoided. Dynamic ad delivery also serves fans up-to-date messaging that reacts to what is happening on the field.

If the England team goes deep into the tournament and the weather brightens up, a supermarket may want to deliver ads around its barbeque range. Dynamic ads take this a step further and show consumers where their nearest bricks and mortar store is.

As the summer of sport starts to truly heat up, having the right brand safety solution will be key for any brand looking to find their audience while avoiding red cards. Embracing the power of AI-enabled solutions gives advertisers the control and precision needed to navigate these fast-paced tent-pole events.

If you’d like to find out more about how our suite of solutions can power your summer of sport advertising, get in touch with our team.

The retail media network explosion of the last few years won’t have passed many advertisers by. Globally, it is the fastest growing channel, with a 21.8% increase in forecast spend this year alone. This equates to around £110 billion of spend that was committed to retail media – by 2025 this figure is expected to be £130 billion.

This is unsurprising considering the benefits that these networks can bring to advertisers, especially with the cookie set to disappear. Advertisers gain access to the granular first-party data that retailers have on their shoppers in a privacy-secure fashion, unlocking a treasure trove of insights. With consumers already in a shopping mood when they reach these sites, ads are also less intrusive and gain an increased contextual relevance.

With the potential for advertisers to reach consumers with such precision at scale, it is no wonder that global retail giants such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target Roundel have all established their own networks. As more networks emerge and advertisers commit further spend into these environments however, retail media networks will start to become increasingly crowded. As this happens, brands and agencies will need to start asking themselves what they can do to stand out and return value through these networks.

Opening up the offsite

Retail media networks are becoming more than just a selection of ad slots within a retailers’ network. Instead they are opening up into a world of offsite opportunities thanks to partnerships with publishers. Two-thirds of publishers (69%) have said that they will prioritise retail media in the next 12–18 months, with 83% looking at embedding products on their web pages. 

As publishers and advertisers look towards a cookieless world these networks offer a revenue opportunity that is too good to turn down. For advertisers, these partnerships combine the reliability and safety of retail media networks with the reach of the open web. Consumers benefit from these relationships by being served more relevant and targeted ads without unwillingly giving up their data.

This opening up of retail media to off-site ad slots is clearly a positive for every part of the advertising ecosystem.

A curated approach

While retail media networks will be looking to partner with premium publishers to ensure that advertisers can access brand safe and high quality ad slots, ensuring that ads are highly targeted to your audience could still be a challenge. This is where curation will be a key asset to marketers.

Curated ad inventory divides web pages into niche categories depending on the audience that an advertiser wants to reach. With AI-enabled brand suitability tools able to read the exact sentiment of a page, these premium ad slots can be more effectively classified so that advertisers utilising a retail media network are reaching their audience with great precision.

As more spend heads towards retail media networks and these networks begin to expand, off-site publisher ad slots will become an increasingly powerful way to gain campaign reach while still maintaining the brand safety and targeting efficiency that retail media networks offer. However, the key to maximising both spend and reach will lie with curation of these premium ad slots. By embracing tools that can more effectively classify web pages, advertisers will be able to better reach their target audience across a retail media network.

Mantis, a leading brand safety and contextual advertising solutions provider for publishers, advertisers and agencies, has announced that Jean-Paul Wevers has joined as Publisher Sales Manager. In this role, Jean-Paul will look to introduce Mantis’ innovative suite of solutions to partners throughout the UK and European markets. 

His arrival comes at an exciting period of growth for Mantis, as the company continues to expand its team to deliver its multi-service offering to an ever-changing industry landscape. 

Jean-Paul is a multilingual media expert with over 25 years of experience in large matrix organisations and successful start-ups across multiple territories. As a cross-platform media specialist, he was previously Publisher Director at Smartclip UK, Head of International Publishing at AOL, and Co-Founder at global video advertising and content syndication company Videoflare. He joins from Seedtag, where he was Head of UK Supply.

Mantis provides publishers and advertisers with a full suite of brand safety tools that enable more precise and suitable campaigns. Built by Reach plc  , this AI-powered toolkit includes Brand Safety, Contextual Targeting, Recommender, and Natural Language AI solutions.

“Jean-Paul’s experience speaks for itself, and we are delighted to be bringing such a knowledgeable specialist into the Mantis team,” says Terry Hornsby, EVP and Founder of Mantis. “We look forward to leveraging his granular ad tech knowledge and wide array of skills to reach a greater number of publishers with our suite of solutions.”

“I’m seriously impressed by the AI-powered tools that Mantis has already developed,” says Jean-Paul. “At a time when digital environments are rapidly changing, brand safety and suitability are more important than ever. I look forward to helping drive innovation in this area and enable publishers to better monetise their advertising offerings.”

Contextual targeting is not just a passing trend; it's an emerging force that will gain even more traction over the next 12-18 months, if not sooner.

Opinions about contextual advertising are diverse and divided. Today, I'd like to shed light on the power and performance we've observed with Mantis, and how you can leverage contextual as the powerful targeting tool it is.

As an industry, we've often struggled to fully grasp the true value context can offer. This is primarily because we've been viewing contextual at a very high level. For instance, we suggest advertising football boots in sports sections or wellies and sunglasses in fashion sections - while this approach achieves decent results, it doesn't tap into the transformative power of contextual advertising. To do that, we need to think outside the box - a strategy that the Mantis team has been actively implementing with publishers, agencies and advertisers over the past 18 months.

Allow me to share some examples of the Mantis segments we've built and provide insight into the impressive performance you can achieve with your content and environments by adopting a fresh approach to contextual.

Consider the wellies and sunglasses example mentioned earlier. A conventional approach would target fashion content - a solid base for sure. But to really elevate performance, we need to consider life situations and content environments that align with the consumer's mindset when they encounter our marketing. For instance, we created a wellie segment that includes:

• Fashion content
• 'What's on' content (e.g., walking, outdoor activities)
• Garden content
• Festival content
• Royal fashion content

These are just a few ways to view contextual through a new lens and enhance performance. With Mantis, you can construct numerous deep contextual segments. And yes, I hear your concerns about scale!

Scale is a significant hurdle in transforming contextual into the powerful tool we've proven it to be at Mantis. But that's where our industry can unite and offer curated contextual marketplaces. Here at Mantis, we’re eager to collaborate and assist with this.

If there's one key takeaway I want you to remember, it's this: view contextual in a new light. Don't just target mattresses in mattress content, advertising in health and bad back content, moving house content, property content. Aim to place your advertising targeting in an environment where it is most beneficial and resonates with your users' mindset.

See in the image above the CTR performance on mantis campaigns which have been enhanced by contextual targeting.