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As an industry, we have recently made a concerted effort to begin placing more ethical media with brands and agencies exploring ways to reduce our carbon footprint and increase investments in BIPOC-owned media partners. While all progress is progress, we are still largely turning a blind eye to the digital and social media partners that have enabled people to perpetrate real harm on those we care about. We spend an astounding $600B annually on digital and social media; that is no chump change and comes with real responsibility.
There have been previous efforts by advertisers to vocalize their support to reform digital and social media by rolling back their media spend, most notably the efforts of Sleeping Giants in 2018 and Stop Hate UK. However, most of these movements involved temporary punitive damages and were largely performative. I believe there is a path forward to ethically evaluate media partners and still make marketing decisions that prioritize key business outcomes.
It all starts with realizing that these problems will not be solved overnight, but are too significant to ignore anymore. They require consistent, thoughtful and data-informed partnerships between media owners, media agencies and large advertisers.
Build an ethical framework for your organization
Whether you are a media agency that plans and buys media on behalf of clients or an in-house media team at a brand, your organization is unique and requires the development of a bespoke ethical framework that aligns with the company’s appetite to reduce harm and the methods used to place your media. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this and its complexity cannot be overstated.
Agencies and brands can tackle these types of challenges by breaking them into smaller decisions that are informed by facts and data. I recommend building a framework (similar to the one below) and evaluating one partner.
