Today, independent media agency Bountiful Cow, has announced the launch of ‘Relative Advantage: Unblocked’, a programmatic tool designed to buy ‘brand unsafe’ but quality inventory. Developed with The Ozone Project, the premium digital advertising platform, the tool is built to solve the industry-wide issue whereby brand safety technology has overreached and now penalises quality publishers, and quality content.
As an agency that champions and grows challenger brands, Bountiful Cow uses Relative Advantage as their growth framework, to find spaces the competition neglect. The agency sees overzealous brand safety measures in the programmatic world as the perfect Relative Advantage opportunity.
Adam Foley, CEO of Bountiful Cow, said: “Brand safety technology was developed as a means of protecting advertisers from the worst of the internet, but nowadays it unfairly penalises the best of the internet. It means avoiding mainstream news, politics, sex, even football articles that contain the word ‘attack, but that’s all the good stuff. That’s what millions of people want to read every day.
“‘Relative Advantage: Unblocked’ solves this because running a paid media campaign without brand safety filters can increase engagement on premium news content compared to campaigns with brand safety overlaid. We back the newspaper editors. Quality publishers are brand safe – full stop”.
To prove this hypothesis, the agency’s head of digital, Charlotte Powers, is also launching a research program, with launch partner Hilltop Honey, activated through Prospero, their fully transparent omnichannel trading platform. The Ozone Project is running the test across UK news sites The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, and The Times, and will test two lines of inventory—one with IAS Brand Safety and Verification overlaid, and one without.
Kate Utting, Marketing Director at Hilltop Honey, said: “Being bold and trying new things is part of our brand DNA, and so having a solid Test & Learn element within our campaign was a given. We’re excited to see the test outcomes, and to share these with the industry to help improve marketing effectiveness for all”.
Joel Woodage, Head of Independent Agencies, The Ozone Project, added: “We’re excited to be working on this initiative with the team at Bountiful Cow, to provide irrefutable proof that advertising alongside editorially led news content on the Premium Web is not only inherently brand safe, but also delivers on campaign performance.
“While we’ve seen many past studies from industry bodies that tell this story, few have been as brave as Bountiful Cow and their clients in proving this hypothesis with live campaigns. While it’s great to hear increased noise about the importance of news content and securing a future for ad-funded journalism, it’s projects like this – backed by investment in the channel – that should be most commended”.
Jo Allan, CEO of Newsworks, said: “This announcement from Bountiful Cow is music to our ears – there has been so much momentum building about the need to rethink overzealous blocklists, when all the evidence shows that advertising on quality news environments benefits brands. However, this is the first time a media agency has taken real action to turn the issue on its head by backing, not blocking, trusted news brands. We applaud Bountiful Cow for setting out to prove that investing in professionally crafted journalism works, whatever the subject matter, and we hope that others follow suit.”
Bountiful Cow will announce the results of the research program at an event in January. Register your interest to attend at hello@bountifulcow.com.
