War in Israel becomes new test of social media safeguards built for brands

Advertisers are contending with the challenges of digital marketing on social media while images from the war in Israel flood online spaces. Brands have renewed concerns about monetizing extremist content, while platforms are struggling to keep up with moderation, according to advertising leaders. Amid the violence, a number of brands are turning to new controls on some platforms, including on TikTok and in Meta’s Reels, to only appear near videos that meet the strictest standards of suitability, according to Andrew Serby, chief commercial officer at Zefr, an independent ad verification service that measures social media sites, including Meta, TikTok and YouTube. There have been reports of schools and parent organizations advising children to get off social media apps because of the effects seeing live images of attacks could have on their mental health, CNN reported on Wednesday. Over the weekend, Hamas used social media and mobile phones as weapons; terrorists sent messages to family members of Israelis who were being killed. Now, there are more concerns that Hamas could release more videos of hostages on social platforms. “This is a pressure test of how far the platforms have come since the ‘adpocalypse,’” Serby said on Thursday. “It’s almost back to the core issue, which is are brands supporting terrorism.” Then and now The ‘adpocalypse’ was a term that gained relevance in 2017, after major brands pulled ads from YouTube over fears that commercials were running in channels affiliated with extremism and, in some cases, terror-related content. Since then, all of the platforms have gone through periods where brand safety has been an issue. Meta, YouTube, TikTok and others have worked with a group called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media [GARM] to implement moderation policies and advertising controls. Just this week, Meta launched the latest phase of brand suitability controls on Reels—Facebook and Instagram’s TikTok-style videos—extending content filters, which the platform already offered brands within other parts of its apps. The content filters are meant to keep ads from running before or after unsuitable material as defined by GARM, which cover images of violence, war and terrorism. TikTok offers inventory filters too, Serby said, allowing brands to set their tolerance for certain kinds of content to “high,” “medium,” or “low,” with low being the strictest setting to avoid adjacency next to even borderline material. “It couldn’t be more relevant unfortunately right now and we just launched with Meta Reels,” Serby said. Agencies and advertisers are reaching out to platforms and third-party partners to discuss the unfolding situation on social media as it relates to the attacks on Israel, Serby said. The attacks opened up an old wound in the digital media landscape that had been festering since the days of ISIS, when that terror organization shared images online of civilian beheadings. Now, videos have come out of Israel showcasing atrocities by Hamas against Israeli civilians, and there have been warnings that more videos could come from Hamas, the organization that runs Gaza, showing civilian hostages. At the same time, the European Union has warned X (formerly known as Twitter), TikTok and Meta about spreading violent videos and misinformation. “We are finding, as you know from going on TikTok, it’s everywhere,” Serby said, “all this [Israel] content is pretty much dominating the social sphere.” On Wednesday, Thierry Breton, an EU commissioner, sent a letter to TikTok saying it had an added obligation to protect its young user base from “violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos.” A TikTok spokesperson told Ad Age that it is stepping up moderation efforts. “TikTok has increased dedicated resources to help prevent violent, hateful, or misleading content on our platform, including increased moderation resources in Arabic and Hebrew,” the spokesperson said by email. “We continue to work with IFCN-accredited fact-checking organizations to help assess the accuracy of content in this rapidly changing environment,” the spokesperson wrote, referring to the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter. TikTok’s spokesperson also noted the work the platform has done with Zefr, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify. X has perhaps received the most attention for its moderation, or lack thereof. Breton also sent X a letter this week, warning that disinformation on the service poses a threat to “public security.” Since Elon Musk bought Twitter last year, many advertisers pulled back spending on the site because of concerns that moderation would become lax and expose their brands to unsuitable material. This summer, Linda Yaccarino joined the company as CEO; the conflict in Israel has now become her greatest challenge, according to Lou Paskalis, founder of AJL Advisory, a marketing consulting firm. Paskalis has publicly supported Yaccarino’s push to right the ship at X. After seeing the handling of information coming out of Israel this week, Paskalis said it’s still unsafe for advertisers. “Really, it has broken down,” Paskalis said of X’s moderation systems. “This is the first real-world event that’s tested what’s left.” “Superwoman herself couldn’t fix it,” Paskalis said. Yaccarino has responded to the EU in a letter describing X’s policies that “prohibit violent and hateful entities, perpetrators of violent attacks, violent speech, sensitive media, and the synthetic and manipulated media policy.” In the letter, Yaccarino also explained X’s crisis response efforts following the Hamas attacks on Israel. On Thursday, the EU demanded X submit more details on its efforts. Read more: X probed by EU over violent content What to do next For brands, the problems of social platforms are beyond adjacency controls, Paskalis said. Adjacency controls prevent an ad from appearing above, below or next to offensive or sensitive material. Twitter, for instance, has deals with third-party measurement firms DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, which can report to brands the nature of the content that surrounds their ads. “This is not about adjacency,” Paskalis said, “this is about the fact that I don’t want my advertising dollars running on platforms that are disseminating misinformation.” “The focus of the conversations I’m having with a number of marketers, very serious marketers, is by investing in Twitter am I endorsing the fact that they are allowing views that trivialize the actions of Hamas,” Paskalis said. That concern harkens back to the “adpocalypse,” when Verizon, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, and other brands boycotted YouTube until it could assure brands that they were not monetizing extremist channels. YouTube did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In the past six years, the Google-owned platform has implemented stricter guidelines on what channels are available for ads and reporting to brands about where their ads run. The GARM framework has also been key to the marketing map in digital media. Google also has a specialist group within the company called Jigsaw, which studies subjects such as disinformation and extremism and designs solutions to prevent their proliferation online. Ad agencies and the brands they represent are still trying to formulate their plan of action for advertising in this environment. “We’re managing response with clients directly as a priority, but yet to formulate external [point of view] since our execs are incredibly stretched,” said one agency representative who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The risk is increasing for brands,” said a former ad exec from one of the major platforms who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You’ll see advertisers pausing in many feeds.”

War in Israel becomes new test of social media safeguards built for brands

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