By Ann Marie Lenihan, CEO, NewsBrands Ireland

At a time when the media landscape is more fragmented, competitive, and unpredictable than ever, one truth remains unshakeable: trusted journalism is indispensable.

It matters to society, to democracy, and critically to business. As Irish news publishers invest in first-party data, innovative storytelling, and multi-platform content, it is time for agencies and advertisers to re-evaluate the central role that news brands should play within their media strategies. Because while there is a clear moral argument for supporting journalism, the business case is now equally compelling.

The Imbalance of Investment

Despite their proven value, Irish news brands are consistently denied the investment they deserve. A digital duopoly of Alphabet and Meta extracts close to €1 billion annually from Ireland’s advertising market, channelling budgets into environments characterized by low trust, questionable brand safety, and demonstrably low attention. This financial imbalance undermines both commercial performance and the long-term sustainability of the media that holds society together.

“Actions speak louder than words” has never felt more apt. Many in the advertising industry champion sustainability, diversity, community impact, and responsible investment. Supporting Irish news publishers, those who hold power to account and reflect the realities of Irish life, is one of the most meaningful actions any advertiser can take to live those values. Journalism cannot thrive without commercial support, and when brands choose trusted news environments, they strengthen society and their own communications.

But this is not a call for support out of sentimentality. It is rooted in performance, attention, and return on investment

The Business Case: Trust, Attention, and Unrivalled Effectiveness

Irish news publishers are innovating at an unprecedented pace. Our expert storytelling spans print, cutting-edge digital platforms, high-quality video, podcasts, and social channels. What remains constant is journalism’s core strength: credible, expert content delivered in formats that highly engaged audiences actively seek out. And those audiences are larger and more valuable than ever.

• Massive Reach with Depth: Every single week, 80% of people in Ireland consume content from an Irish news brand (TGI 2025).
• The Trust Premium: For advertisers, this immense reach comes with a commodity that is increasingly rare: deep trust. Our News for the Next Generation study of 2,000 people aged 16–29 found that young audiences rate Irish news brands as the most trustworthy of all media.
• Driving Action: Critically, eight in ten young people take direct action after seeing an ad or review in a news brand environment.

Our News for the Next Generation research also definitively shows that 80% of Gen Z in Ireland engage with a news brand weekly. They may consume news differently, but they absolutely consume it. Publishers are meeting them where they are, on social, audio, and digital platforms, engaging young audiences not by diluting the integrity of journalism, but by transforming how it is credibly delivered.

The industry’s smartest players already understand this power. Even Meta and TikTok choose to run advertisements in Irish national news brands when they want to reach informed, influential, and high-value audiences. Leading government campaigns and major commercial brands are successfully leveraging native advertising, publisher podcasts, video, and social formats to engage audiences with unparalleled depth, credibility, and context.

Trust is not a soft metric

In a digital world besieged by misinformation, low-trust channels, and rampant brand-unsafe spaces, news brands offer advertisers a credible, high-attention environment where messages land with maximum authority and impact. Trust is not a soft metric –  it directly correlates with profit growth and long-term brand equity. Effectiveness Expert Peter Field confirms this: campaigns that strategically include news brands deliver a 52% uplift in overall advertising effectiveness. The  recent Newsworks Attention Study reinforces this reality, proving that high-attention digital environments deliver a 17% uplift in brand effects and a 12% increase in market-share growth.

Yet, despite this compelling evidence, industry investment continues to drift toward demonstrably lower-attention and lower-trust channels.

Reforming Keyword Blocking

A major, self-defeating barrier to responsible news investment is the continued, blunt misuse of keyword blocking. Originally a necessary tool to protect brands from truly harmful content, keyword blocking has tragically expanded to exclude broad, essential terms such as “government,” “election,” “climate,” “Gaza,” “Ukraine,” “crime,” or “death.”

For most generic platforms, these words may appear rarely and without context. For news publishers, they are central to our mission of reporting on real-world events.

The result is that quality journalism is disproportionately penalised – stripped of monetisation simply for covering real-world issues. Ironically, the environments most harmed by keyword blocking are the brand-safe, regulated newsrooms advertisers say they value.

Despite industry belief, there is little to no peer-reviewed evidence that advertising near news harms brands. In fact,  a report from INMA finds the opposite is true

We urge agencies and advertisers to adopt smarter, more nuanced brand-safety solutions: contextual tools, human oversight, and publisher-level whitelists that protect brands without inadvertently defunding responsible journalism.

The choice is clear. Advertisers can continue to passively fund low-trust, low-attention channels, or they can invest with integrity, leveraging the attention, trust, and proven effectiveness that Irish news brands deliver.

This article originally featured in the Irish Marketing Journal ( IMJ).