How Scope3 Brand Standards Solves for Overblocking of News Content

From a monetization perspective, few challenges loom as large for news publishers as content overblocking.

Legacy brand safety tools were never designed to navigate the dynamic nature of news. Instead, they rely on rigid categories, blunt keyword lists, and superficial sentiment analysis. The result? High-quality, professionally produced journalism is routinely excluded from campaigns – not because it’s unsafe, but because the systems in place lack the nuance to understand it and make informed decisions.

This is exactly the kind of problem Brand Standards was designed to solve. Our new agentic brand safety and suitability solution helps news publishers recover lost revenue and monetize quality journalism confidently and at scale.

The problem: premium content caught in a rigid, outdated filter

Historically, both established news outlets and platforms with monetizable news media have been penalized by legacy brand safety and suitability solutions for simply producing or distributing news content.

Reporting on topics like politics, climate change, or crime can trigger keyword blocklists, even when the content is measured, factual, and appropriate for advertising.

What gets missed in these blocks is the full picture:

• News media offers a premium advertising opportunity. Professionally produced journalism offers high-quality, trusted environments that attract engaged audiences, making it a powerful, underutilized channel for brand investment.
• News content is diverse. It spans everything from arts and culture to sports and science. It is not inherently problematic, political, or polarizing.
• Suitability is subjective. Suitability isn’t one-size-fits-all. For example, an airline might avoid ads next to stories about flight delays, but those same articles could be perfect for a car company or insurance brand. Different brands have different comfort zones, and brand safety tools need to respect that.
• Local news commands deep trust. Local news in particular commands deep consumer trust and meaningful engagement, making it a powerful advertising vehicle for brands.

When news content is blocked in blanket fashion from campaigns, advertisers miss significant opportunities to reach consumers in premium contexts and newsrooms suffer as a result.

For publishers, the stakes are clear: over-reaching brand safety tools throttle revenue, undervalue inventory, and limit crucial revenue streams, resulting in a demonetization of quality journalism.

The solution: Scope3 Brand Standards

Scope3’s Brand Standards offers a smarter, LLM-powered solution that far exceeds keyword blocking and category exclusion.

Built on agentic AI, Brand Standards enables advertisers to place ads in news inventory confidently and responsibly. It blocks truly unsafe content that could harm a brand’s image, while unlocking the reach and performance benefits of high-quality journalism.

Here’s how it works:

• Custom, brand-defined models: Each advertiser defines their own boundaries. An auto brand may be comfortable placing an ad adjacent to political coverage; a CPG brand may not. With Brand Standards, each brand’s values are modeled and enforced with precision.
• LLM-powered analysis: Every piece of relevant media is analyzed in full context using LLMs to accurately understand the content and determine if it aligns with a given brand’s unique suitability preferences.
• Real-time classification: News moves fast. Our agents do too, evaluating content as it’s published, so advertisers can safely support evolving stories without fear of appearing in the wrong place.
• Plain-language explanations: Publishers and brands can see exactly what’s being blocked, and why, enabling smarter refinements over time. And, for the first time, publishers can request review of classifications they disagree with – unlocking a new dynamic between buyer and seller.

Brand Standards provides URL-level transparency into classifications, with in-depth insight into how each artifact is categorized across buyer model types with the option to request a review when appropriate.

Why this matters for news publishers

Scope3 Brand Standards reframes brand safety and suitability as a pathway to more sustainable monetization for news publishers. With this approach, news publishers can:

• Reclaim revenue from previously blocked but entirely suitable content
• Strengthen trust with advertiser partners by demonstrating safe, strategic ad delivery
• Give ad ops teams better visibility into blocking behaviors with the ability to take action
• Preserve the editorial integrity of the newsroom

News shouldn’t be treated as a liability. Instead, it should be seen for what it is: a powerful marketing channel that offers advertisers access to premium, professionally-produced content and highly-engaged audiences.

What industry leaders are saying

BuzzFeed, owner of HuffPost, recently shared their thoughts on Brand Standards at Scope3’s Story Time, highlighting how greater transparency and control are changing the conversation around brand safety.

"Scope3's transparency and innovation are exciting." said Jason Nadel, VP of Revenue Operations at BuzzFeed. "Giving buyers the power to see how articles are classified and appeal those designations will fundamentally change how brand safety is discussed and deployed. I'm optimistic this new, agentic approach will give buyers more confidence to invest in quality news websites."

Want to hear more? Watch this brief Story Time highlight featuring BuzzFeed’s Jason Nadel in a candid discussion on how Brand Standards is reshaping suitability strategies for publishers and buyers alike.

Want more? Check out the full session recording here.

Ready to get started?

Scope3 Brand Standards helps unlock the full monetization potential for news publishers while ensuring the right brands show up next to the right stories. With Brand Standards agents at work in the digital advertising ecosystem, publishers can monetize their content and brands can advertise with confidence.

Ready to unlock revenue from your news content? Get started with Scope3 Brand Standards for free today to see exactly how your content is categorized.

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