Zefr x Cannes Lions 2024: Live from the GroupM Rooftop with Michael Barbaro

Advertising in the Era of Generative AI & Global Political Turmoil

Last month at Cannes Lions 2024, Zefr took part in a live recording from The GroupM Rooftop, touching on the ways in which technology is helping brands grapple with the challenges of advertising in today’s fast-changing and highly dynamic news environment.

The conversation was led by Michael Barbaro, host of The New York Times ‘The Daily’ podcast, and featured Rich Raddon, co-CEO and co-founder of Zefr, Samantha Stetson, VP, Client Council & Industry Relations at Meta, and Mark Weintraub, Executive Director at EssenceMediacom.

Opening up the discussion, Rich noted that the 2016 U.S. election brought to light the issue of misinformation. This revelation led to significant changes, including numerous journalists collaborating to create various non-partisan fact-checking networks worldwide.

Zefr realized that misinformation would be a challenge, so they invested in misinformation technology that integrates vetted data from fact-checking organizations. They also concentrated on assessing the varying degrees of misinformation — low, medium, or high — while evaluating a brand’s sensitivity to these levels and addressing the nuances of suitability.

The conversation then continued towards topics such as the impact of misinformation on brand reputation, social platforms’ approaches to combating misinformation, evolving strategies to avoid misinformation, and expectations for the 2024 U.S. Election.

Below are key soundbites from the conversation that have been condensed for length and clarity.

What does it look like for a misinformation to enshroud a brand and complicate its reputation?

Mark: “When brand content is next to nefarious content or negative content, and they’re on the page at the same time, that’s a nightmare scenario.Through a combination of first-party controls, with platforms like Meta, and third-party controls, with Partners like Zefr, that makes for a great brand experience. [It’s important] to make sure that a platform has world-class controls [to maintain] a strong brand safety floor so bad stuff doesn’t come onto the platform.”

Recognizing the risk of misinformation, how are social platforms approaching this?

Samantha: “First and foremost, understanding what brand safety is versus brand suitability is critically important. Brand safety is something that [Meta] has been doing for years by enforcing our community standards. That is the policies that govern what is allowed on the platform and AI has played an enormous role in getting us much better at doing that. At the end of 2017 we were proactively detecting hate speech a little under 25%. If you now look at Q1 2024, we’re close to 95% proactive detection with our automated system.

The next layer is brand suitability. There may be content that could be problematic but doesn’t violate the standards in our commitment to freedom of expression and voice. We give advertisers control so they can manage their suitability and risk tolerance. [In 2023] we built inventory filters for Facebook and Instagram Feed and Reels so advertisers could control the level that is appropriate to their risk assessment…We’re in a very different situation than we were previously. We have over 100 fact-checkers around the world who do this in over 60 languages. If something is labeled as misinformation, it does not qualify to be monetized so it is not eligible to appear above or below content from an advertiser.”

Zefr can now produce transparency reports for brands on social media platforms. How does this work?

Rich: “It’s all on platforms. We identify different conversations around topics that can cover misinformation, this can be elections in Uruguay, India, or even things like UFOs. We’re very open about how we label content. We can label something as misinformation and it could change over time as more information or science develops.”

Samantha: “The great thing about the transparency reports is that you can go into their reporting system and actually see the content that your ads are appearing next to. So you have visuals to compliment the words that are on a piece of paper.”

New risks will emerge, how does this system of [avoiding misinformation] evolve?

Samantha: “Our approach to misinformation is a three-pronged approach: remove, reduce, and inform. If it violates our policy, such as if it’s something that causes real world harm, we’re going to take it off the platform. If it is purely misinformation-related, we want to reduce the distribution of that so that you’re likely to not see it on the platform. We’re also going to inform you by putting up a label that [the content you’re seeing] has been fact-checked so that you know you can trust before you’re sharing or reading it.”

What do you anticipate in this current 2024 U.S. Election?

Rich: “[Zefr] will do their utmost to ensure that brands aren’t supporting anything to any degree in suitability of misinformation. We’re going to be sending signals to Meta, TikTok and all of our partners. If we look at the positives…there are now 375 fact-checking organizations globally that did not exist prior to 2016. There are a lot of meaningful efforts, and people that are passionate about it and on the front-lines.”

Mark: “We know we’re going to be advertising in an environment where there’s so much attention on the election but because of the time and money we’ve spent on making sure that where we are going to be advertising is a safe environment, I’m not concerned because we’ve done the belt and suspenders approach and ensured that we’re on platforms that have a strong brand safety floor and also verifying what’s on the platform — so that combination of two things makes me feel pretty optimistic.”

Samantha: “Since 2016 we have invested over $20 billion in our safety and integrity efforts and we have over 40,000 people working on this…I’m excited for the elections because of the tools, transparency and the control that we have. One thing that advertisers are doing is having discussions with us now…and proactively planning for it which is a conversation that didn’t exist before. Also, this is the largest year of elections around the world, there’s two billion people that have gone to the polls. Our teams have so much experience doing this and I believe they are leading the industry in protecting the integrity of the elections.”