How do you plan advertising on news sites without overblocking?
Part of Brand suitability
The short answer
Plan advertising on news sites topic by topic. List the news beats the plan will reach, such as politics, crime and disasters, and set a tolerance for each, separating feature stories from breaking news and opinion. Check which platform settings remove news, then agree an approval workflow with the client, including what happens when a major story breaks.
Key takeaways
- In a 2026 study, 43.99 percent of sampled news articles carried an unsafe rating from at least one of three brand safety providers.
- The legacy floor framework puts breaking news and opinion coverage at medium risk and news features at low risk, never at the floor.
- Google offers three news content themes and two sensitive content exclusions that can remove news; know which surfaces each one covers.
- A news plan needs a tolerance per beat, sample pages the client has seen, a named approver and a written breaking news protocol.
- Pause by topic and with an end date during a major story, rather than leaving news entirely.
How much news do brand safety tools rate as unsafe?
A January 2026 preprint, Inconsistencies in Classification of Online News Articles (opens in a new tab), collected 4,352 news articles from 51 domains through Google News and compared the ratings of three commercial brand safety providers. Of the 3,219 articles that received ratings, 1,416, or 43.99 percent, had an unsafe rating from at least one provider.
Breaking and general news domains were rated unsafe more often than domains on specific news topics, 52.14 percent against 32.67 percent. The providers also disagreed with each other: where two of them rated the same article, their overall ratings differed in 22.98 percent of cases. The authors call for “a standardized, transparent, explainable, and auditable brand safety framework.”
Which news topics need their own tolerance decision?
News is not one topic. A plan that sets one rule for all news will either remove news the brand wants or accept beats the brand never discussed. IAB Tech Lab's Content Taxonomy 3.1 (opens in a new tab) gives the main beats their own category IDs, and its Sensitive Topics branch holds the categories that tolerance settings act on. Mapping one to the other is the first planning step.
| News beat | Taxonomy 3.1 category and ID | Sensitive Topics category it can trigger | Decision the brand makes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elections and policy | Politics (386), Elections (387), Political Issues and Policy (388) | Debated Sensitive Social Issues (Z7rJBM) | Whether to appear beside campaign coverage and opinion, or only beside explainers |
| Crime and courts | Crime (380), Law (383) | Crime and Harmful Acts to Individuals, Society and Human Right Violations (XtODT3) | Whether trial and investigation reports are acceptable, and whether images matter |
| Disasters and accidents | Disasters (381) | Death, Injury, or Military Conflict (I4GWl6) | Whether to stay on during a disaster, and whether recovery and preparation stories stay in |
| War and conflict | War and Conflicts (389) | Death, Injury, or Military Conflict (I4GWl6) | Whether to appear beside conflict reporting at all, and for how long |
| Weather | Weather (390), under Science | None, unless the story reports casualties | Whether to accept weather coverage, with a rule for severe weather that turns deadly |
The taxonomy can also describe what a page is for, separate from what it is about. Tech Lab's Content Taxonomy 3.0 descriptive vectors (opens in a new tab) list News (1020) and Opinion and Op-Ed (BEZLLC) as distinct content purposes, so a plan can accept reporting on a beat while treating commentary on the same beat differently.
How do tolerance tiers apply to news coverage?
The legacy Brand Safety Floor and Suitability Framework, published today by the Brand Safety Institute (opens in a new tab), places news in the same position in every category. Breaking news and op-ed coverage sit in the medium risk column, beside dramatized depictions in entertainment. News feature stories sit in the low risk column, beside educational and scientific treatment. The floor and high risk columns describe promotion, glorification and graphic depiction, not reporting.
| Tolerance set for a category | News the plan keeps | News the plan loses |
|---|---|---|
| Low risk only | Features, explainers and educational coverage | Breaking reports and opinion on that subject |
| Up to medium risk | Breaking reports and opinion, plus features | Graphic or glorifying coverage |
| Up to high risk | Almost all reporting, including graphic images | Only content below the floor |
Which Google Ads settings remove news placements?
Google Ads has settings aimed at news specifically, and they sit beside the general suitability controls. Google's help pages gave two paths when checked in October 2026, Tools > Content suitability and Admin > Account settings; confirm in the account. Each one names the surfaces it covers. The table quotes Google's content suitability help page (opens in a new tab), checked in October 2026.
| Setting | Google's description | Surfaces |
|---|---|---|
| Excluded content theme: News (recent) | “News content that's been recently announced, regardless of the themes or people being reported on” | YouTube in-stream, Watch Next and Shorts, the Display Network and Google video partners; not the YouTube Home or Subscription feeds, and news themes do not apply to mobile app inventory |
| Excluded content theme: News (sensitive) | News “that people might find sensitive or upsetting, such as crimes, accidents, and natural incidents,” or commentary on potentially controversial social and political issues | Same as above |
| Excluded content theme: News (source not featured) | “News content from sources that aren't featured on Google News or YouTube News” | Same as above |
| Excluded sensitive content: Tragedy and conflict | “Excludes graphic content of combat or war” | Display Network and Google video partners, not YouTube |
| Excluded sensitive content: Sensational and shocking | “Excludes content of disasters or accidents that show casualties or death” | Display Network and Google video partners, not YouTube |
Two notes matter for news. Google says certain sensitive video content from authoritative news sources that follows its advertiser-friendly guidelines can run in Moderate inventory. And excluding News (recent) removes all fresh reporting whatever its subject, which can go further than a brief means by avoiding sensitive news.
What approval workflow keeps news on the plan?
Six steps to an approved news adjacency plan
- List the beats the plan will reach. Use the taxonomy categories, so the client and every platform read the same names.
- Set a tier for each beat. Record whether the brand accepts low, medium or high risk coverage on that beat, and whether opinion is treated like reporting.
- Show real pages. For each beat, put two or three recent articles in front of the client: one clearly in, one borderline, one out.
- Name the approver. One person on the client side signs the tiers and the sample decisions, with a date.
- Write the breaking news protocol. The IAB's 2020 guide recommends reassessing suitability at the onset of developing stories; decide in advance who may pause, which beats a pause covers and when it ends.
- Protect the news fronts. The same guide describes exception lists that exempt trusted news homepages and section pages, so a pause on one beat does not remove a publisher's whole site.
Breaking news protocol checklist
- The person allowed to pause news buys is named, with a backup.
- A pause covers named beats, not all news.
- Every pause has an end date or a review time written down when it starts.
- Feature, weather and local sections stay on unless the protocol says otherwise.
- Creative is checked for lines or images that read badly next to the story.
- The client is told what was paused, why and when it resumes.
What does a news adjacency plan look like for a bank?
Fictional example
A fictional regional bank in Illinois
A fictional regional bank with branches in Chicago and downstate Illinois wants its small business loan campaign beside local and business news. Its old setup excluded all news, so the planner starts from the beats instead.
Business, local government and weather are set to accept up to medium risk, so breaking reports stay in. Crime and courts are set to low risk only, keeping features and explainers but not breaking crime reports. Election coverage is accepted for explainers and reporting but not for opinion pages. The client's marketing head reviews three sample articles per beat and signs the tiers.
The protocol names the bank's communications lead as the person who can pause. If a major story involves a bank failure or fraud, only business news pauses for 48 hours, and the homepages of the trusted Illinois news sites on the exception list stay on. The local news planning guide shows how the planner found those sites.
How does PlacementGraph keep responsible news coverage in reach?
Frequently asked questions
Does advertising next to news hurt brand trust?
A 2020 IAB study with Magid Research, a survey of 2,029 US adults aged 18 to 54 who follow news weekly, found that for 84 percent trust in a brand stayed the same or rose when it advertised within news. Fewer than one in ten believed sensitive news content would hurt an advertiser within it.
Should opinion pages be treated like news reports?
Not automatically. The legacy framework groups breaking news and op-ed coverage together at medium risk, but IAB Tech Lab's descriptive vectors label news and opinion as separate content purposes. A brand can accept reporting on elections while staying off opinion pages, as long as the plan writes that choice down for each beat.
What does Google's News (source not featured) theme remove?
Google describes it as news from sources that are not featured on Google News or YouTube News. That could include small and new local outlets, so check what the theme removes before turning it on, especially for a plan that relies on community news sites.
Can a brand pause news during a breaking story without leaving news entirely?
Yes, if the pause is scoped in advance. Limit it to the beats the story touches, keep feature, weather and section pages on through an exception list, and give the pause an end date. The IAB's 2020 guide calls this a revisit, reset and repeat approach as news cycles shift.
Sources
- Inconsistencies in Classification of Online News Articles: A Call for Common Standards in Brand Safety Services (opens in a new tab)Smith, Grossman, Torres-Aguero, Sen, Borcea and Chen, arXiv, January 2026
- Content Taxonomy 3.1 (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, GitHub
- Content Taxonomy 3.0 Descriptive Vectors (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, GitHub
- Brand Safety Floor + Suitability Framework (opens in a new tab)Brand Safety Institute
- About content suitability (opens in a new tab)Google Ads Help
- Understanding Brand Safety and Brand Suitability in a Contemporary Media Landscape (opens in a new tab)IAB, December 2020
- IAB Study Finds That Brands Benefit from Advertising Within News (opens in a new tab)IAB, October 30, 2020
Researched and written by PlacementGraph Research. Read how we research, source and update these pages. Corrections: diana@placementgraph.com.