By: James Hunt, SVP, Global Client Solutions, CNN International Commercial

The role of the advertising industry in supporting the news ecosystem continues to be a prevalent topic of discussion. The issue was summarised by Jamie Credland, CEO of World Media Group, who said during a CMO roundtable that CNN hosted recently: “I feel like there is an industry assumption that quality journalism will just carry on going. But by not actively supporting news, are we sleepwalking into a time when journalism will cease to exist because there isn’t the required funding for it?”

Too alarmist? Maybe. Or is this exactly the type of warning the advertising industry needs to ensure the continued support of recognised news organisations?

Whatever your view, it’s clear we’re in a period of profound change and being able to turn to a reputable news-source to make sense of what’s happening feels more important than ever.  The latest data certainly seems to support this – according to GWI’s Q1 2025 report, 72% adults across the region (the report includes data from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt) consume news on a regular basis.

And CNN, which has been around for more than 45 years and has had permanent bases in the Middle East since 2002, is still recognised as one of the most trusted (news) brands in the world.

Brand safety

For some marketers, however, an assumption remains that news is somehow not brand safe, and that there’s a negative impact to brands by being around it. This is actually contrary to the reality and numerous independent studies have shown that brands that do advertise around news perform significantly better than other genres such as sport and entertainment. One such study by Stagwell (Future of News Survey) found that 92% of leadersin the GCC agree that advertising on news media is not only a good investment, but that it can have a positive reputational impact with the public (91%), financial investors (92%) and political/government leaders (92%).

Most publishers also now offer a wide variety of non-hard news for their audiences – from business and travel, to culture and lifestyle. Like many premium publishers, at CNN we believe our environments are brand safe across all platforms, but we also understand clients want to be around brand suitable content, so many of them now work with our in-house studio Create on producing compelling human-led stories that align with their values and resonate with their target audiences.

Technology and the importance of context

In response to the cautiousness around brand safety, many publishers have also invested heavily in their own technology to ensure ads are shown around contextually appropriate stories. Several factors including nuance, detail and sentiment are key to ascertaining if news content is brand suitable and so at CNN, we built our own tool called SAM (Sentiment Analysis Moderator) over 5 years ago, which intelligently analyses the context of sentences across text, audio, video and images. By pairing this with manual tagging, we utilise positive targeting to actively match brands with content that reflects their values and campaign aims and that will engage the audiences they want to reach. 

In the GCC, the use of brand safety protocols is high, with 91% of marketing leaders applying them, according to Stagwell. This increased use of technology across the news industry gives brands confidence and reassurance knowing that there’s heightened evaluation and mechanisms in place to ensure ads are being served in line with their campaign requirements.

It’s clear that marketers in the region are aware, however, that overuse will have a negative impact on the news industry with 73% in the region saying brand safety protocols are overapplied to the point of hurting media outlets and advertisers.

What is the future of news?

To understand these concerns and discuss some of the solutions to advertising around news, I moderated a roundtable at Cannes Lions this year with a group of CMO’s and agency leaders to discuss what’s next for journalism and the role brands can play.

The ensuing conversation really highlighted the complexities of the situation. On the one hand, everyone agreed that news attracts a highly engaged and influential audience, making it very appealing to brands and their target audiences – it was also heartening to hear that for those marketers who are actively advertising around news, they were seeing tangible results that were helping to drive real business outcomes for their companies, in many cases more than other areas of investment. 

But advertisers now have incredible choice so a challenge for news publishers is creating an authenticated audience that can start to compete with the tech platforms. It was also agreed that diversification into areas like streaming, CTV, subscription models and events will be vital for news organisations to survive, not only to open new revenue streams, but also to offer a wider array of solutions (and ‘logged in’ audiences) for marketers to utilise.

Ultimately, my hope for the future lies with the word that seemed to come up time and again – trust. Trust continues to be the north star for many news brands and despite the legitimate concerns about the rise of fake news, everyone was unanimous in their belief that people will always turn to the people and places they trust to find out what’s happening in the world.

And for now, that’s not a bad place to start.