Brands were quick to halt social media ad spend in the aftermath of Wednesday’s chilling riots on the Capitol, opting to keep quiet in a crisis or to avoid appearing next to unsavory content. 

Other ad buyers lengthened keyword blocklists and paused ad campaigns across all channels, an action that we know all too well hurts publishers’ ad revenue. Just how much is still unclear, but video ad platform Teads told me it saw a 3% increase in blocked content between Jan 5. and Jan 6.

This routine has become an all-to-regular occurrence for ad buyers used to a choppy news-cycle peppered with social unrest. But the repetition over the last year has built up muscle. My colleague Ronan Shields and I wrote about how these playbooks have been refined.

What next? Contacts I spoke to expect the pause to be short-lived as strategies flex and spend is shuffled to other channels. Some wary buyers hit pause until Jan. 20, when Joe Biden is sworn in as President. 

The periods before the restarts might be getting shorter as brands get quicker at pivoting, but there is still a gulf between what advertisers say they want to do (support premium publishers) and what they do (blanket keyword block). 

“Advertisers place dumb, overly broad filters on their digital ad buys, which effectively ends up lumping serious professional journalism with fringe conspiracy sites,” as News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern put it.

Related: social platforms, not content with kicking off Trump, have also cut popular conservative app Parler from their app stores, Scott Nover reports. Even Parler’s lawyers have turned their back on the “free speech” platform. Scott will have more on what the outlook is like for Parler soon, so stay tuned. 

With that, have a great start to the week and drop me a line with any thoughts. 

Lucinda 

Lucinda.southern@adweek.com

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