In April, the FTC notched up one of the most important wins for online speech in recent years: a consent decree with three major ad agencies (Dentsu, WPP, and Publicis Groupe) requiring them to refrain from colluding to suppress ad revenue to disfavored online content.Under the agreement, the agencies agreed to stop collaborating on “brand safety” exclusion lists that excluded websites and social media platforms from ad revenue if they violated the ad industry’s politically restrictive requirements. Run out of industry-wide bodies like the now-shuttered Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), this was a major source of pressure on tech platforms during the peak censorship years.The Advertising Industry’s Deepening Role in Online Censorship“This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement at the time of the consent decree.Publicis GroupeOne of the parties to the decree, the French multinational ad agency Publicis Groupe, is about to conclude a $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp, an AdTech giant that specializes in collecting and deploying offline data. The upcoming acquisition makes Publicis Groupe’s recent involvement in online censorship worth revisiting.During the peak censorship era of the early 2020s, Publicis Groupe was one of the worst offenders in the ad industry.Other ad agencies (IPG, GroupM, Omnicom to name a few) were also active in cross-industry agreements to force restrictive content moderation on social media platforms. But Publicis Groupe stands out for its 2018 decision to lead the funding round for NewsGuard, an organization that assigned a rating to every major online news site denoting its alleged trustworthiness.NewsGuard’s own founders described these ratings as producing a “whitelist” for advertising giants to direct their revenue to, leaving the sites that didn’t meet NewsGuard’s out in the cold. NewsGuard went on to become one of the most well-known organizations during the peak censorship era, with numerous anti-establishment news sites ending up on its blacklist.NewsGuard Strategy Revealed: Financial Throttling, Virality Suppression, Institutional PartnershipsNewsGuard’s focus on the ad industry resulted in partnerships with ad agencies IPG and Omnicom as well as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a now-shuttered umbrella organization that the ad industry used to force its desired content moderation policies onto online platforms.As well as its work with the private sector, NewsGuard did work on behalf of the U.S. government, receiving a $750,000 grant from the Department of Defense in 2021 to track “misinformation” online. The company also involved itself with the European Union’s emerging digital censorship regime at an early stage, urging the bloc to strengthen its revised Code of Practice on Disinformation, the voluntary agreement that would evolve into the Digital Services Act (DSA).In addition to leading NewsGuard’s $6 million seed round, Publicis Groupe was also directly involved in the oversight of NewsGuard. Until November 2024, NewsGuard’s five-man board included Steve King, who at that time served as head of Publicis Groupe’s European operations. After decades at the ad agency, King left Publicis Groupe in November 2024, shortly after Donald Trump’s election.The height of the NewsGuard-Publicis collaboration came during the COVID pandemic, when Publicis – which has represented numerous pharmaceutical giants including COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, Sanofi, and AstraZeneca – teamed up with the ad blacklist to create “HealthGuard” “HealthGuard”, a browser extension claiming to guide users on what online health sources ought to be trusted, and which ones ought to be starved of ad revenue.How Big Pharma’s Favorite Ad Agency Helped Create NewsGuardIn an announcement, Publicis Groupe’s health division explained that its partnership with NewsGuard guaranteed its clients access to the latter’s blacklists and whitelists:Through the partnership, Publicis Groupe clients will gain access to NewsGuard’s Responsible Advertising for News Segments (RANS), an inclusion and exclusion tool for marketers curated by NewsGuard’s team of trained journalists. This tool provides Publicis Groupe clients with a constantly updated exclusion list to protect them from having their ads unintentionally fund thousands of misinformation and hoax websites.Publicis Groupe’s healthcare media agency, Publicis Health Media, also recently partnered with NewsGuard on the launch of its HealthGuard browser plug-in to power a new public service campaign, “VaxFacts,” following a rise in misinformation and hoaxes relating to the COVID-19 health crisis and vaccine development. HealthGuard’s ratings and Nutrition Labels have been integrated into PHM’s proprietary process for ensuring that clients’ publishing partners meet the highest standards of content, enabling brands and consumers to more easily navigate complex health and wellness challenges more easily by relying on trustworthy publishers.The LiveRamp ConnectionWhile its history with ad industry-led censorship is not as extensive as Publicis, the potential for its technology to be used for such purposes is there. LiveRamp offers its clients technology to block advertisers from chosen segments of a client’s audience.This is critical technology for blacklisting, since it has the potential to demonetize not just websites but audiences. This is critical to the censorship of programmatic advertising, which tracks audiences rather than particular websites. If an audience is regularly found on disfavored websites, LiveRamp’s exclusion system could easily be used to cut them off.“Advertisers have found that because of programmatic advertising which basically is advertising that follows you, or a certain demographic that resembles you, it doesn’t care what it doesn’t care what website the ad is on it cares about what you may be looking at. So brand name, highly reputable, advertisers have found that in their programmatic advertising they are ending up on fake news sites which undermines their credibility and really embarrasses them. So the way we’re going to help them solve that is we are going to license in effect a whitelist, which is all of our green sites.”Beyond its technological capabilities, LiveRamp remains involved in a field that is often found adjacent to censorship: diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) – or in LiveRamp’s corporate parlance, “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.” The company maintains a DIB page on its website – still active – where it says:“Issues of equity, inclusion, and belonging are as relevant at LiveRamp as in the broader communities and industries with which we work. That’s why our team’s diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DIB) efforts are a cornerstone of our innovative culture. We approach this work with focus, humility, and a growth mindset. Together, we can help solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, disrupt the status quo, and contribute to a more equitable future.” LiveRamp provides an excellent example of how the DEI / DIB field can intersect with censorship, in the form of a 2020 Forbes op-ed from the company’s then-head of products and platforms.Titled “Tech’s Greatest Asset In The Fight Against Racism Is Inclusive Product Development,” the article begins by complaining that the tech sector is “overwhelmingly white and male,” before arguing that every company needs to be a “champion of diversity, inclusion and sense of belonging (DIB)” in the design of their products.In LiveRamp’s case, explained the article, these design choices include blacklisting technology embedded in online ad servers and restrictive content terms of service:It’s important to plan for a product’s usage once it’s left your company and entered the general marketplace to prevent unintended applications. For example, ad servers are embedded with the ability to block ads from websites promoting racist content. This is an important backstop baked into these products. While it’s difficult to control use cases outside of your four walls, companies that employ a range of strategies — like constructing thoughtful terms of service agreements and developing specific vetting processes for use cases and partnerships — can push the industry forward.Though censorship pressures were nearing a peak in 2020 and this is no longer the case, LiveRamp has never publicly disavowed this position. Its diversity, inclusion, and belonging (DIB) page remains active and online.
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