GumGum and socialcontext Make It Safer to Advertise Against the News

GumGum, a contextual-first, global digital advertising platform, announced a new partnership with socialcontext, a contextual solution that specializes in classifying diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) news segments.

GumGum, a contextual-first, global digital advertising platform, announced a new partnership with socialcontext, a contextual solution that specializes in classifying diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) news segments. Advertisers now can use socialcontext’s advanced contextual segments to unlock content promoting DEI and other social causes that would otherwise have been blocked, unlocking inventory for advertisers and increasing revenue for news publishers.

GumGum deeply values DEI and firmly believes in creating a more equitable workplace, industry and world. The partnership with socialcontext allows socially conscious brands and agencies to confidently invest in news that align with their DEI values and goals. Socialcontext’s DEI contextual segments expand the scale of programmatic campaigns by 20% and correctly categorize news content with over 80% accuracy–unblocking 5% of sensitive news content alone with their racial-diversity filter.

“It’s important for brands and companies to take a stand and support social issues and causes, including investing in these causes so that positive change is possible,” said Phil Schraeder, CEO of GumGum. “We live in an era of social responsibility and we all must play our role to educate and encourage progress toward equity. Our partnership with socialcontext makes it easier than ever for brands to support news and content around issues they care about.”

GumGum’s partnership with socialcontext goes further than identification to ensure advertisers can feel confident advertising against the news. Each news segment and filter identified by socialcontext starts with a definition approved by an ethics board made up of academic and industry experts. Segments are then created through supervised deep learning algorithms that detect socially equitable content with unparalleled specificity. There are currently eight news segments supported by socialcontext, including racial diversity, LGBTQIA+, climate change and gender equality. To ensure accuracy, algorithms are regularly updated and new filters are added monthly.

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“Content classification for news categories is broken,” stated Chris Vargo, founder and CEO of socialcontext. “Broad keyword blocking paired with news categories continue to discriminate against marginalized communities and incredibly important issues and causes. By recognizing good news with socialcontext segments, we’re making it easier to invest in credible journalism and amplify the voices and stories that push forward social progress.”

Contextual technology is the ultimate universal targeting method for a cookieless age that is able to reach customers in the right mindset across current and future environments. Verity™, GumGum’s proprietary contextual intelligence platform, is the first independent ad tech platform to achieve the Media Rating Council’s content-level accreditation for contextual analysis, brand safety and suitability across the web and CTV environments, and is aligned with both the IAB’s content taxonomy and GARM’s Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework. GumGum’s partnership with socialcontext advances the company’s commitment to providing the most sophisticated, brand safe contextual intelligence solution in the market. The socialcontext segments add an additional layer of specificity to GumGum’s contextual targeting capabilities that are not addressed through the IAB or GARM content categories.

“Blocking ads from appearing across credible journalism devastates news publishers who lose out on revenue. This is exacerbated tenfold for non majority owned news publications,” continued Phil Schraeder. “Yes, the news is volatile, and we desperately need to continue to fund credible journalism and local news. Now, we have a safer, more precise targeting solution for advertisers to feel comfortable and confident investing in news and the causes that are most important to them.”

At this time, socialcontext segments are available programmatically through Verity via two activation routes—as pre-bid segments within Xandr’s Invest DSP, and as PMPs that can be targeted in most major DSPs. The integration is limited to regular display ads; video targeting capabilities and high-impact creatives are on the roadmap for later this year. Socialcontext segments are initially only available for English-language content in North America.

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