The appeal of traditional journalism to engaged, coveted audiences is still “news” to many major advertisers. But when established publishers try to make that case, marketers cite that brand safety concerns are top of mind.
“I tell [those advertisers] it’s a miss, to be honest,” Mike Irenski, SVP, Programmatic Strategy, Newspapers & TV at Hearst, told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein. “Our journalism connects with a deeply engaged audience who are actively seeking incredible information. I think the idea that news is unsafe is outdated.”
Modern contextual tools and publisher-level signals now provide multiple layers of brand safety verification, Irenski noted. He also mentioned that Hearst’s subscription-based model delivers logged-in audiences that enable addressable targeting within news sites where third-party cookies are less deployed compared to past years due to privacy concerns and the greater emphasis on privacy and first-party data.
Beyond hard news
Hearst’s content mix extends far beyond political coverage, Irenski said. Just 30% of its outlets are focused on hard news and politics. The remaining content spans lifestyle, food and drink, local sports, and utility offerings like outdoor recreation guides that create brand-suitable environments.
“We often joke internally that we write about your house and not the White House,” Irenski said. “We have fantastic lifestyle content, food to drink content. We write actively about high school sports and the journey that a lot of those players are taking into their college careers.”
This content diversity allows Hearst to craft targeted buys that avoid political adjacencies while still leveraging the engaged news audience. The breadth of coverage means the publisher can customize campaigns to match advertiser objectives across multiple content categories.
Transparency drives partnership success
Collaboration between advertisers and publishers produces better performance outcomes than arms-length programmatic relationships, particularly when publishers understand key performance indicators and can optimize inventory accordingly.
“Partnership really starts with collaboration and transparency. Advertisers who lean in with us often see much better results at the end of the day,” Irenski said. “Understanding what a KPI is, what they’re looking for, where they are tying back their performance better helps us set up those buys.”
Hearst’s 130-plus year history has generated robust first-party data assets that enable precise targeting within brand-safe contexts while reaching audiences actively seeking to connect with brands.
Privacy future-proofing
Hearst has operated ahead of industry changes by prioritizing privacy-first solutions and leveraging its logged-in subscription audience rather than relying on third-party cookies. This approach provides addressable reach across browsers like Firefox and Safari where cookie-based targeting fails.
“We’ve been operating much more ahead of the pack, I think, than some others. We’ve really leaned into privacy first solutions,” Irenski said. “Given this audience is so logged in, we have a high bias for addressable audiences and we can reach them across Firefox, Safari, a lot of areas that maybe the advertiser wouldn’t be able to understand.”
The subscription model means audiences are paying for content access, creating engagement levels and data quality that differentiate premium news from free content environments.
First-party data’s dual purpose
Hearst’s first-party data strategy focuses on improving both editorial recommendations for readers and audience targeting capabilities for advertisers. This dual approach ensures data usage benefits consumers through better content experiences while enabling advertisers to find audiences unavailable elsewhere.
“We are rethinking about how we utilize that first party data, one from an audience and consumer standpoint to provide better journalism, better recommendations and better content and storytelling,” Irenski said. “But we’re also trying to find better ways that we can help advertisers find audiences that they can’t find elsewhere.”
Clean room technologies and signal optimization help identify the most valuable audience characteristics without compromising consumer privacy or publisher relationships.
Quality over scale
The programmatic marketplace is shifting toward quality and relevance rather than pure reach metrics, Irenski said. Keeping pace with that shift requires transparent environments where advertisers can buy with confidence based on contextual relevance and audience engagement.
“The future programmatic is going to be about quality and relevance, and not just scale,” Irenski said. “A vision that we have is really creating a transparent marketplace that allows advertisers to buy with confidence.”
“If we put our audiences at the center of what we’re trying to do, we believe we can build lasting trust in the programmatic ecosystem and still be able to perform even in a world with less cookies,” Irenski said.
You’re watching “Rethinking the Rules of Engagement: Kindness & Transparency in Advertising, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by WunderKIND Ads.” For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
