Stagwell to increase adspend on news media by 22%

Stagwell will increase its adspend in news by 22% year on year as the global marketing and communications group makes a big bet on "trusted journalism" to bring high value audiences to clients.

The announcement coincides with Stagwell's second annual Future of News UK summit and the release of new data showing that industry leaders see news as a key medium for reaching key stakeholders.

Mark Penn, chairman and chief executive of Stagwell, said: “At Stagwell, we believe supporting trusted journalism isn't just good for society – it's smart business. The data continues to back that up, which is why we're doubling down on our commitment with a significant increase in news adspend for 2025."

In recent years, ad investment in "hard news" has seen a decline as a proportion of overall budgets. According to research by Prohaska Consulting, 30% of publisher inventory is currently being underfunded or undersold due to brand safety blocking.  

Stagwell’s rival holding companies admitted shying away from news in favour of other channels such as social media. In a testimonial to congress last year, media agency giant GroupM said it spent less than 5% of its global ad expenditure on news and only 1.28% on online news sites.

Brand safety applications ‘are too broad’

The Future of News initiative aims to reinvigorate this relationship between news and marketing through research, events and informed discussion around brand safety. 

This latest study was conducted by Stagwell's research consultancy, HarrisX, and fielded among more than 500 EMEA CEOs and board directors across the UK, France, Germany and the Gulf Co-operation Council.

It found that, overall, 85% of business leaders thought that advertising on news media was a good investment, and 71% believed brand safety protocols were overapplied to the point of hurting media outlets and advertisers.

James Townsend, Stagwell EMEA CEO, concluded: “This study illustrates that despite the noise around brand safety, AI and politics, EMEA business leaders recognise the significant impact news media has on effective advertising.”

This article first appeared on Campaign sister title Performance Marketing World