Europe and the UK are to follow US states in probing the ‘Jedi Blue’ agreement, amid heightened concerns over “black box” ad technologies including brand safety tech.

And while INMA research this week shows publishers are using trusted coverage of the Ukraine conflict to spruik subscriptions, keyword blocking of words such as ‘Ukraine’ is threatening the relationship “at the worst possible time”, according to News Media Alliance research and insights vice president Rebecca Frank.

She says the blocking threat “made it more difficult for news organisations to report on COVID-19 and the January 6 riots, and will make it more difficult in the face of hostilities in Ukraine.”

- This week (March 11) the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority launched probes into a 2018 agreement between Meta and Google regarding online advertising services (codenamed ‘Jedi Blue’). The agreement – also the subject of a complaint by Texas and other US states – currently in the US courts provided for the participation of Meta’s Audience Network in Google’s Open Bidding program. “No decision” has been made on whether Google or Meta have broken the law, the CMA says.

According to the Texas lawsuit against Google, Jedi Blue provided Facebook with preferential rates and other benefits in return for Facebook not building a competing system or using header bidding.

- Investigations by INMA researcher-in-residence Greg Piechota published this week show almost three-quarters (72 per cent) of the top 50 news subscription brands referred to journalistic qualities such as trusted Ukraine coverage, among subscription benefits.

In the first week of March, 14 per cent “directly referred to the war in Europe” in their calls to subscribe. He cites examples from Sweden’s Expressen, Spain’s La Vanguardia – which offered a 60 per cent discount on a three-month trial – and his former employer, Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza (84 per cent discount on a six-month paid trial).

- In her NMA article, Rebecca Frank says that beyond harming news publishers, many brand safety tools don’t even do what they promise, while companies have found new ways to drain value from publishers, with reports of ad tech companies scraping publisher data and selling contextual advertising segments based on it without permission.

“The harm that ad tech companies cause to publishers is now clearer than ever,” she says. “They take away publishers’ ability to earn enough on advertisements to support the expensive, important work of gathering and sharing real news, waste their dollars with fraud and sell useless ‘safety’ tools that don’t make things safer.

“And in an age when disinformation is rampant online and information warfare is fuelling actual war in Ukraine, choosing to support real news outlets directly and advertising alongside high-quality news can literally save lives.”