The advertising industry is undergoing a seismic shift as regulatory actions and conservative pushback force a rethink of how brands approach “brand safety” — the practice of ensuring advertising dollars don’t end up beside content deemed harmful, controversial, or politically sensitive. Sparked by lawsuits, government inquiries, and mounting pressure from right-leaning media voices, the new reality is shaking up the relationship between major agencies, advertisers, and the news ecosystem.

Political Backlash and Regulatory Scrutiny Target the Advertising Status Quo

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, conservative media outlets like The Daily Wire are experiencing renewed access to mainstream advertising budgets. This comes after years of being shunned by agencies over concerns that their content posed brand safety risks. Now, thanks to a groundswell of support from conservative lawmakers and intensified scrutiny by regulatory bodies, the pendulum has swung: avoiding perceived anti-conservative bias is a new priority for many in the ad world.

This shift was cemented in June 2025 when the Republican-led Federal Trade Commission (FTC), under Chairman Andrew Ferguson, conditionally approved a $13.5 billion merger between global ad giants Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG). The approval carried a landmark caveat: Omnicom agreed not to collude on the exclusion of publishers based on political or ideological views, in an effort to preserve viewpoint neutrality.

The FTC’s actions follow an activist period by House Republicans. In 2024, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan led an investigation accusing key advertisers and groups—including those affiliated with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM)—of unfairly boycotting conservative-leaning media platforms such as The Daily Wire, X (formerly Twitter under Elon Musk), and others. The probe ignited lawsuits and a broader political and legal reckoning for the ad industry.

Brand Safety versus Brand Suitability: A Shift in Language and Practice

What began as a technical concern—ensuring brands weren’t appearing alongside violence, pornography, or hate speech—swelled over the last decade into a complex practice of avoiding whole swathes of news, political, or controversial content. As a result, many major publishers and platforms saw ad revenues shrink, particularly outlets on the political edges.

“Brand suitability” is emerging as the preferred phrase, reflecting a more thoughtful, brand-specific approach to placements — and an explicit departure from the sometimes-blunt instrument of the old brand safety paradigm. Instead of blacklisting entire categories or keywords, advertisers are increasingly evaluating where their brands should appear on an individual basis.

According to Liam Brennan, a former agency director, this approach denotes a more positive, nuanced stance: “Before it was ‘block, block, block’—now it’s about suitability for each brand’s values and audience.”

Legal Actions and GARM’s Collapse Upend the Industry

The political pressure materialized in high-profile legal actions. Elon Musk’s X launched lawsuits against Mars, CVS Health, and others, contending they conspired via GARM to cut off billions in ad revenue and marginalize the platform. Similarly, conservative video platform Rumble filed antitrust suits against GARM and participating companies.

In a dramatic response, GARM shut down in the fall of 2024, with its parent organization, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), insisting that GARM’s frameworks were voluntary and pro-competitive. Nonetheless, the collapse left a regulatory vacuum and an atmosphere of uncertainty for brands and news publishers alike.

FTC Expands Its Oversight and Industry Anxiety Grows

The FTC’s involvement grew deeper in 2025, with wide-ranging “civil investigative demands” sent to media watchdogs such as Media Matters, Ad Fontes Media, and multiple ad verification tech firms, including publicly traded players like Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify. These inquiries demanded information on how firms defined and enforced concepts like misinformation, hate speech, and deceptive content — raising the stakes for every player in the ad verification ecosystem.

Advertising holding company CEOs like Mark Penn (Stagwell) have called much of the brand safety panic a “fabricated issue,” while agency groups are increasingly reluctant to use the phrase “brand safety,” opting instead for carefully worded alternatives that emphasize brands’ freedom to choose where they appear.

Still, both liberal and conservative publishers claim the previous system disproportionately harmed them, and industry pollsters report general dissatisfaction across the ideological spectrum with how advertising revenue has been distributed.

Who Benefits—and Who Loses—as Brand Safety Guidelines Evolve?

For conservative media especially, the crackdown has opened new doors. The Daily Wire’s senior VP of advertising, Christine Hoffmann, notes significant new business opportunities from major brands and agencies that previously would not consider placements. Evidence suggests other prominent conservative and right-of-center outlets—like Fox News and The National Review—are also gaining share, mirroring the rising political influence of the right after Trump’s re-election.

However, the benefits for news publishers overall remain uncertain. A 2024 House Judiciary Committee hearing revealed that news outlets comprise just 1.28% of global ad budgets at GroupM, a major media buyer. Instead, the tech giants—Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Amazon—are expected to capture over 54% of global digital ad spending this year, according to the World Advertising Research Center.

As agencies and platforms scramble to comply with new regulations, some insiders worry the resulting caution may further starve high-quality journalism of critical ad dollars, consolidating power with tech behemoths able to navigate complex compliance requirements at scale.

The Promise (and Peril) of AI-Driven Brand Safety

As blunt keyword blocklisting falls out of favor and regulatory risk rises, innovative ad tech startups are leveraging artificial intelligence to bring more granular targeting and real-time contextual understanding to ad placements. Companies like Mobian are developing systems that consider context, tone, and brand suitability at the page or even paragraph level, while Stagwell is working with The Trade Desk on a politically neutral marketplace for news advertising, aiming to support quality journalism without viewpoint bias.

These AI solutions are pitched as tools for a fairer, more adaptable era in digital advertising—one where true “brand suitability” is objectively measured, not dictated by legal threats or industry group mandates. Still, consensus in the industry is that another multi-brand initiative like GARM is unlikely to emerge soon: the risk of becoming a political or legal target is simply too great.

Policy experts like Lisa Macpherson of Public Knowledge caution that, beneath the surface, advertisers and agencies will still protect their brands from potential reputational harm. Yet, in a landscape reshaped by federal enforcement and lawsuits, those decisions will be made with far more legal, political, and technical caution.

“We may not like how we got here as an industry, but it’s where we should have been all along,” concludes Mike Zaneis, CEO of the Trustworthy Accountability Group.