Advertisers keep avoiding news sites and publishers have had enough of it

Marketers have long been wary about running ads in the news media, concerned that their brands will land next to pieces about terrorism or plane crashes or polarizing political stories.

That advertising no-go zone seems to keep widening. It is a headache that news publishers can hardly afford. Many are also grappling with subscriber declines and losses in traffic from Google and other tech platforms, and are now making an aggressive push to change advertisers’ perceptions.

Advertisers’ aversion to news was on full display in the past election, when many marketers paused campaigns, and it hasn’t fully abated, according to industry executives. The news cycle since the election has remained hectic and unattractive to advertisers, with stories about President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet picks, global wars and the shooting of a health insurance executive in New York.

News organizations recently began publicizing studies that show it really isn’t dangerous for a brand to appear near a sensitive story. At the same time, they say blunt campaign-planning tools wind up fencing off even harmless content—and those stories’ potentially large audiences—from advertisements.

Forty percent of the Washington Post’s material is deemed “unsafe" at any given time, said Johanna Mayer-Jones, the paper’s chief advertising officer, referencing a study the company did about a year ago. “The revenue implications of that are significant."

The Post’s crossword page was blocked by advertisers’ technology seven times during a weekslong period in October because it was labeled as politics, news and natural disaster-related material. (A tech company recently said it would ensure the puzzle stops getting blocked, according to the Post.) The thunderstorm story was cut off from ad revenue when a sentence about “flashing and pealing volleys from the artillery of the atmosphere" triggered a warning that it was too much like an “arms and ammunition" story. As for the brownies, a reference to research from “grocery, drug, mass-market" and other retailers was automatically flagged by advertisers for containing the word “drug."

While some brands avoid news entirely, many take what they consider to be a more surgical approach. They create lengthy blacklists of words or websites that the company considers off-limits and employ ad technology to avoid such terms. Over time, blacklists have become extremely detailed, serving as a de facto news-blocking tool, publishers said.

A recent blacklist from Microsoft included about 2,000 words, including variations and translations. Words listed include: “attack," “Biden," “Trump," “boycott," “cocaine," “collapse," “Gaza," “guns," “racism" and “sink hole," according to a list viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft declined to comment.

The lists are used in automated ad buying. Brands aim their ads not at specific websites, but at online audiences with certain characteristics—people with particular shopping or web-browsing histories, for example. Their ads are matched in real-time to available inventory for thousands of websites.

Some executives, including BDG Chief Executive Bryan Goldberg, expect advertising to pick back up in the new year. BDG, which runs magazines including W and Nylon, expected revenue to grow year-over-year, but disappointing ad spending around Art Basel in Miami and the holiday season prevented that, Goldberg said.

“The ad business boomed during the summer and early fall but hit a holding pattern about three weeks before the election," Goldberg said, citing softness in beauty, travel and fashion in particular.

“There were existential fears," he said. “Most of our clients lean into positivity, happiness and holiday joy and the election was providing very little of that."

From Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, Dow Jones digital publications, including The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch, offered advertisers who were concerned about getting lost in the busy election news cycle unusual performance guarantees on their campaigns. The company promised that their digital ads would receive a specific level of attention from readers, and if they missed the targets, the Journal parent would provide so-called make-goods, or credits for future ads.

“We were hearing this problem around people wanting to pause," said Josh Stinchcomb, global chief revenue officer for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. “I heard it more explicitly this time around than I had heard in the past."

“Some folks say they’re coming back in January," said Matt Prohaska, CEO of Prohaska Consulting, which works with brands and publishers. “There are others still on the sidelines, in part because they’ve seen a little more drama postelection than a normal transition."

For publisher Garden & Gun, which doesn’t do much programmatic advertising, the magazine’s name itself may alienate some brands.

The magazine, which provides Southern lifestyle content, considers its name an asset with serious brand equity. In recent years, however, the magazine has considered abbreviating the name to G&G, in part to attract advertising from luxury brands and younger audiences that might be fearful of the word “gun," said publisher Christian Bryant.

The gun in the magazine’s name is a reference to sports like skeet shooting and hunting. But Bryant said he knows guns are polarizing, and gun violence growing. “That’s not what we are about whatsoever, but the association does sometimes give a bad rap," he said.

For now, the magazine is keeping its name while using a new logo with the abbreviation for branded products and in events and marketing.

Brands and ad-buying firms have long promised to rely less on blunt keyword-blocking tools, and some have embraced more sophisticated technology that considers the entire content of a story. For example, they could make an allowance for an ad to appear next to a story even though it contains the word “shot," once it becomes apparent the article is about a basketball game and not a violent encounter.

The Post is testing a new tool with similar abilities, so the advertiser could weed out touchier news articles without blocking entire stories based on one word taken out of context, said Mayer-Jones.

Publishing rivals including The Journal, Post, CNN and New York Times have joined forces to combat the issue of ad avoidance, and worked with ad company Stagwell to ease brands’ fears. They are promoting studies showing that ads adjacent to stories covering “politics or gun shootings" performed as effectively as ads placed next to “positive" stories about business, sports and entertainment. Prohaska’s firm also recently announced a new publishing collective intended to encourage advertisers to buy ads on high-quality news sites.

These days, less than 5% of client ad spending for GroupM, one of the largest ad-buying firms in the world, goes to news, according to Christian Juhl, GroupM’s former chief executive who revealed spending figures during a congressional hearing over the summer.

Juhl said at the time that brands don’t need to “risk advertising" in news because alternatives like sports and entertainment content provide “better measurement, formats, and capabilities."

Susan Schiekofer, GroupM’s chief digital investment officer, said she tries to set up deal structures with publishers to avoid hard news, while still buying ads around finance or automotive content. But for many advertisers, there is still “a little throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at Suzanne.Vranica@wsj.com