Don’t Miss Out: News Junkies Are the Next Premium Audience for Advertisers

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.]

The notion of “brand safety” is one of modern advertising’s most common phrases. It used to mean ensuring your brand did not appear next to questionable content on questionable websites. But it has since grown to a widespread fear – one that’s prevented marketers from reaching a premium audience and drained much-needed advertising dollars from quality news publishers.

This fear is completely misguided. Ads placed next to stories covering politics or crime perform just as well as ads next to business, sports, or entertainment stories, according to Stagwell’s Future of News APAC News Advertising Study conducted among 9,876 adults across Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Vietnam. The study, which tested four different localized real brand ads placed next to six types of real news content, found there is unequivocally no difference in key brand reputational metrics – like purchase intent, favorability, and trustworthiness – between ads placed adjacent to supposedly “not brand safe” content and “brand safe” content. 

There is also no brand safety issue among key demographic groups for advertisers, including news junkies, Gen Z, millennials, and university-educated adults.

Not only is there virtually no risk in placing ads next to news stories, but brands are also foregoing the opportunity to reach a premium audience. 21% of adults in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are “news junkies” – individuals who follow news very closely, checking the news an average of 7.2 times per day and reading an average of over 9 news articles daily. Nearly three in four APAC adults say they follow the news closely. And 9% of them are exclusive news junkies who only follow news very closely, not sports nor entertainment. 

These news junkies are a valuable audience, too: 78% of APAC news junkies have a tertiary degree compared to 65% of the general population; 70% are full-time employees; 72% are millennials or Gen X; and 71% live in urban areas. They’re decision-makers hungry for new information. They’re connected to vast networks in their jobs, from college, and in their neighborhoods.