By Jack Marshall, Head of News
Since the launch of DV’s News Accelerator™ last year, we’ve worked closely with advertisers, agencies and publishers to support greater advertiser investment in news media.
The progress has been encouraging. In the first half of 2025, impression volume for DV advertisers across major news publishers’ sites increased by 58% year-over-year, aided by enhancements to our technology and our ongoing efforts to highlight to advertisers and the broader industry the brand-building opportunities news content presents.
DV data also reveals that advertising on news content now drives 16% more engagement than non-news content – reinforcing our belief that investing in news is smart business for advertisers, and that those avoiding it altogether are missing out on powerful opportunities to engage with valuable, high-performing audiences.
To build on this momentum and further our efforts to meet the evolving needs of the news community, I’m excited to announce today a new set of suitability categories designed to help advertisers maximize their investment with news publishers.
While a growing number of marketers are investing in news with great success, others are more reluctant. Their hesitance is often driven by the news cycle’s unpredictability – in particular, the uncertain, rapidly changing nature of breaking news. Some advertisers opt to avoid news publishers’ properties entirely, missing opportunities to engage with highly valuable audiences as a result.
DV constantly evolves its classification approaches and methodology to take advantage of advances in technology and bring clients the most precise, up-to-date solutions. In keeping with this mission, we’re introducing three new categories to make it easier than ever for advertisers to engage effectively with news audiences while ensuring their suitability needs are maintained: Sensitive Breaking News, Current Events and Opinion & Editorial.
Based on internal testing, DV clients avoiding news content could leverage the new categories to reduce blocks on news publishers' sites by up to 42% –– expanding suitable inventory, and improving publisher monetization as a result.
The new categories apply our advanced AI-classification models to give advertisers enhanced flexibility and control when navigating news content, enabling them to:
Engage with valuable news audiences. Instead of avoiding news publishers, the new categories will enable advertisers to engage confidently with their audiences while avoiding only the specific types of content they deem unsuitable.
Access more high-performing inventory. Granular content classification and more flexible suitability options oriented around content types will enable advertisers to unlock additional inventory and deliver broader reach with news publishers’ content.
Navigate breaking news: Automated real-time coverage of breaking news stories removes the need for sensitive advertisers to block news publisher content entirely, or adjust campaigns, settings and keyword lists in response to the news cycle.
Earlier this year we introduced several innovations to make advertising on news more effective, scalable and suitable. This included a first-of-its-kind AI-powered keyword optimization tool, which has helped advertisers using the tool to reduce their keyword lists by 15% on average, delivering better outcomes for advertisers and publishers.
We’ve also engaged directly with advertisers to help them take more nuanced approaches to news to maximize reach and performance and invested in research and resources to highlight how news content can help advertisers connect with receptive, highly engaged, high-income audiences.
Recent DV research found that consumers actively value brands that support the creation of news content, for example, and that a small minority of consumers — just 6% — said they believe it's unsuitable for advertisements to appear alongside all forms of online news content.
These advancements represent the next step in our ongoing mission to encourage greater advertiser investment in news and ensure that our product innovation continues to support the needs of the news industry.
By pairing AI-driven classification with transparent, nuanced suitability controls, we’re ensuring that advertisers can capitalize on high-performing, highly-engaged news audiences while helping news publishers to thrive.
This work will continue to be informed by our close relationships with advertisers and news publishers, including our News Accelerator Publisher Council. It reflects DV’s ongoing commitment to supporting the evolving needs of the news community. DV will continue to listen, refine and improve to help drive long-term success for news publishers, advertisers and the broader industry.