Context

• Hard news attracts audiences to news publishers’ sites, but all too often the ad dollars one might expect to follow don’t materialise. That’s because many advertisers continue to use crude keyword blocklists to avoid appearing next to content – natural disasters, murders, armed conflicts – they feel might reflect poorly on their brands. 
• And those blocklists may be infrequently reviewed, leading to situations such as that described to Business Insider by Mike Zaneis, CEO of the Trustworthy Accountability Group. 
• Zaneis recently reviewed brand block lists that still contained the term “Ariana Grande” long after the event that led to the pop star being listed in this way – a terrorist attack at her 2017 Manchester concert. “Never mind that she’s won two Grammys since then,” he said.

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