Singapore – GroupM and Internews have announced that over 350 news publishers in Asia-Pacific have received increased advertising investment from GroupM in 2023, following the rollout of an industry-first programme to help brands support quality journalism by re-investing media budgets in trustworthy news publishers.
In the Asia Pacific region, the duo has mapped a year-on-year increase in advertising investment on more than 350 news websites. These websites are from ten major Asian markets, including Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. There’s been a further 43% year on year increase in spending on these sites when comparing Q1’23 to Q1’24 across the markets.
GroupM and its Back to News initiative, in partnership with Internews, a media support nonprofit, have been working to provide advertisers access to ad environments on local, national, and international news websites across the globe.
This win for journalism and news accessibility comes when legitimate digital news publishers increasingly face competition from made-for-advertising websites and artificially generated content. With this increase in investment, positive changes on the publishers’ end will holistically help uplift the ecosystem.
The positive impact on client campaigns is also clear with recent results from a leading automotive client in the region showing viewability improving by 16.5%, an increase in click-through rate by 60% and a decrease in CPM by about 20%.
Anita Munro, chief investment officer for APAC at GroupM, said, “As the largest single-point media buyer in APAC we have a responsibility to support a diverse, sustainable, transparent and high-quality media ecosystem. The Back to News initiative has been an important component of our Responsible Investment Framework and aims to ensure we continue to invest alongside our clients into high-quality news publishers and provide a counter to the proliferation of fake news and MFA content that has flooded the market in recent years. The work that our supply management team has done in this space is truly market-leading.”
