As Trump returns to the White House, media buyers clamp down on brand safety

By Kimeko McCoy and Sam Bradley • January 22, 2025 •

Ivy Liu

On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders, including one aimed at the dismantling of government diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The move signals yet another step in the DE&I about-face and speaks to the shifting cultural landscape that marketers and advertisers are reckoning with now.

In response, media buyers said they’re on high alert, prioritizing brand safety and clamping down on media buying practices to more frequently review ad placements. In what’s expected to be a volatile news cycle, media buyers said they’re more regularly reviewing inclusion lists, websites and domains deemed brand safe and acceptable for serving ads.

“The prevailing mood and direction, at least in my experience, has just been to stay really tight around the election we just had,” said one agency executive who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s just been really rigorous, making sure nothing un-brand suitable comes through.”

Out of the seven agency execs Digiday spoke with for this story, only one said a client is excluding news and political categories from its allowlists, or inclusion lists, and excluding entire publishers, in hopes to avoid this year’s tumultuous news cycle. (The agency exec did not detail which exact publishers were excluded.) Others said creating too narrow of an inclusion list in the name of brand safety could potentially hinder scale and opportunities to reach new audiences.

Historically, inclusion and exclusion lists have focused primarily on politics, violence and other so-called “obvious things” advertisers want to stay away from, said Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at ad agency VML. Going forward, however, those lists might look different to accommodate for recent changes in the digital media landscape. “The misinformation, disinformation and controversial topics and social fear has just added a whole other element to it,” Kohl said.

2025 is expected to be a very different cultural landscape than that of just a few years ago, when companies took political stances and held advertiser boycotts. Trump’s return to the White House comes at a time when cultural narratives are shifting. As a result, media buyers said they’re spending more time reviewing inclusion lists, up from once every few months or once a quarter to every month or even more frequently in some cases, in preparation for what could prove to be a volatile news cycle.

Conversations around the intersection of politics and brand safety have been mounting for some time. Last year, ad industry powerhouses, including the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), faced lawsuits from X owner Elon Musk, right-wing video platform Rumble and others accusing the organizations of efforts to defund conservative media. Following Musk’s antitrust lawsuit, GARM shuttered.

Around the time that Omnicom announced its takeover of Interpublic Group, Congressional representative Jim Jordan and his committee took aim at the two holding companies for their ties to the WFA and GARM as part of an antitrust investigation. At the start of this year, Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the platform was ending third-party fact checking and working with the Trump administration to “restore free expression.” At the same time, tech leaders like Zuckerberg, Musk and now TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew have cozied up to the new administration, and were even spotted at Trump’s inauguration.

Seemingly, this all sets the stage for brand safety, inclusion lists and content moderation to become a hot-button issue this year, perhaps even on a regulatory basis. Most recently, Meta’s decision to roll back fact checking and content moderation policies on Facebook and Instagram seems to have sped up concerns around brand safety. Ad dollars, though, have yet to shift as agencies hold their clients in wait-and-see mode to see how the first quarter of Trump’s presidency shakes out.

According to agency execs, clients are more cautious and are worried about how to navigate brand safety and maintain cultural relevance in an increasingly polarized social climate. However, budgets aren’t being retooled to be more inclusive of conservative publishers or right-wing media.

“Obviously, we keep an eye on where audience is, but we’re not going to run over to X because of whatever, because now Trump’s in office. That doesn’t appeal to our clients,” said a second group media director who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect client privacy.

Media buying execs said clients aren’t inclined to redo inclusion lists in response to Trump’s second term, allowing more openness to political content, conservative publishers or right-wing media — at least not yet. “[It’s] the opposite,” said the first anonymous exec. “It’s been, ‘Make sure we’re super covered’ as it relates to learning anything through political or news-based.”

As Trump returns to the White House, media buyers clamp down on brand safety

Media buyers say they’re prioritizing brand safety in what’s expected to be a tumultuous news cycle this year.