Wurl, a leader in the streaming TV industry, today released its latest CTV Trends Report exploring the realities of brand safety within news programming on FAST. The data challenges long-standing assumptions around news, highlighting how advances in scene-level contextual targeting are helping advertisers unlock premium inventory with greater precision and confidence.
As streaming audiences continue to grow, News channels provide a strong opportunity to reach highly-engaged audiences. In fact, Wurl’s report found that News accounts for about 8.6% of all FAST viewing hours — with some households consuming almost exclusively News content. Devices that spend more than 90% of their time watching News account for 7.4% of viewing hours across all FAST genres, creating a meaningful audience segment unreachable through other genres. Still, many advertisers continue to rely on broad genre- and channel-level exclusions that limit access to news inventory entirely, sacrificing reach and performance.
“Brand safety has historically forced advertisers into an all-or-nothing approach with news,” said Dave Bernath, CEO at Wurl. “But the reality is far more nuanced. Today, with scene-level contextual analysis, advertisers can evaluate the actual moment before an ad break rather than making assumptions about an entire channel or program. That changes the equation completely.”
Additional findings from the report include:
- More than one-third of News scenes are brand safe. Of all analyzed news content, 35.7% of scenes were classified as fully brand safe across IAB-aligned categories.
- A small but highly engaged segment drives the majority of news consumption. Just 6.4% of all devices account for over 80% of total news consumption, highlighting a highly-engaged audience that would be difficult to reach elsewhere.
- Brand safety risk in news is concentrated and predictable. When looking at specific categories, the majority of brand safety flags are driven by a handful of categories tied to real-world events, including death/harm, violence, and war/conflict. Several other commonly cited risk categories are far less prevalent.
- Brand safety risk profiles differ across red- and blue-leaning news environments. Red-leaning content skews more toward war/conflict and derogatory themes, while blue-leaning content more frequently features violence and death/harm.
As advertisers seek greater precision and control in streaming TV environments, scene-level targeting is reshaping how news inventory is evaluated and activated on the biggest screen in the home. Rather than relying on broad exclusions, advertisers can now identify suitable moments in real time through solutions like Wurl Advertising’s Scene-Level targeting — unlocking trusted, high-attention news audiences with greater confidence and scale.
Click here to read “The CTV Trends Report: Rethinking Brand Safety and Audience Behavior on News Channels.”
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