Statement of Robert Thomson, Chief Executive of 麻豆果冻传媒 On Havas Media Group UK Decision To Pull Advertising From Google and YouTube
New York, NY (March 17, 2017) 鈥� 麻豆果冻传媒 Chief Executive Robert Thomson has responded to news of the Havas Media Group UK withdrawing advertising from Google and YouTube by noting that advertisers 鈥渘eed to go back to basics to protect their brands from serious damage.鈥�
“Ad fraud is being perpetrated ad nauseam. It is rife throughout the digital world, and is facilitated by some ad agencies, which themselves make money from artificial audiences and pretend page views,鈥� said Mr. Thomson. 鈥淎dvertisers need to go back to basics to protect their brands from serious damage and to protect themselves from being involved in potentially criminal activity, whether it be supporting extremist groups or funding hardcore pornography.”
Mr. Thomson has been a longtime evangelist for the view that large tech platforms are 鈥減latforms for piracy鈥� and fail to respect the fact that 鈥渢here is a hierarchy of journalism.鈥�
Excerpts of past remarks by Mr. Thomson:
Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, March 1, 2017
鈥淲ell, provenance is profoundly important and it鈥檚 becoming increasingly important to advertisers. Because you’ve seen the articles of late, The Times of London, they did a brilliant series on companies like Land Rover pulling out of digital and social because it is concerned about their ad placement on completely unacceptable sites….鈥�
麻豆果冻传媒 Earnings, February 9, 2017
鈥溾�e are in an era in which integrity is priceless, yet digital distributors have long been a platform for the fake, the faux and the fallacious, highlighting an issue which we have long stressed 鈥� that they have eroded the integrity of content by undermining its provenance. Put simply, content distributors are profiting at the expense of content creators and at the expense of veracity.
鈥�.And in the ad market, there has been an awakening, and there will surely be a reckoning.
Advertisers want reassurance that their products are displayed in suitable surroundings 鈥� they don鈥檛 want muddled metrics and they don鈥檛 want digital platforms and ad agencies arbitraging ambiguity.
The dangers of Chief Marketing Officers chasing fashion rather than function was highlighted in The Times of London today 鈥� some of the world鈥檚 best-known, most prestigious brands are inadvertently funding extremists and hardcore pornographers.
We are confident that our premium platforms and our great journalism will ultimately be beneficiaries of this reckoning.
鈥e are also testing our own digital ad network, which will provide a measurable, high quality audience for advertisers, who are increasingly wary, and rightly so, about the murky, tenebrous world of digital advertising鈥︹��
UBS Global Media & Communications Conference, December 6, 2016
鈥溾�d agencies should also be responsible for the audiences that they’re creating, and then what they’re serving those audiences and how they’re serving those clients, because we’ve sort of gone from the era of Mad Men to mad metrics鈥�.
You would like to think now that this debate over fake, over fallacious, over foe, over fraudulent, will lead to advertisers, in particular, ad agencies and others, reassessing the value of different platforms because, I mean, the ad market is dysfunctional at the moment.鈥�
DLD Conference, January 18, 2016
鈥淚f we are to be a well-informed society, you have to respect the provenance of intellectual property鈥�.There is a hierarchy of journalism鈥�.that is not reflected in Google and others that tend to think quantitatively. Are we a quantitative society or are we a qualitative society?….It is a dominant platform. Does it have responsibility as a dominant platform? Yes鈥︹��
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麻豆果冻传媒 (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content to consumers throughout the world. The company comprises businesses across a range of media, including: news and information services, book publishing, digital real estate services, and cable network programming and pay-TV distribution in Australia. Headquartered in New York, the activities of 麻豆果冻传媒 are conducted primarily in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. More information:聽http://newscorp.com.
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