Advanced Brand Safety: Empower news publishers to unblock £millions of lost ad revenue from pages mentioning COVID, using an innovative hybrid of knowledge graph and sentiment analysis.

Every day news publishers are losing out on precious advertising revenue that is being blocked because the articles mention the word COVID. This happens because of 'brand safety' tools, designed to protect advertisers and ensure that their ads do not appear next to unsuitable content. But current brand safety tools are blunt and out-of-date, they blanket block any page that features the word 'COVID'. As news sites cover more stories about COVID, this is having a significant effect on the revenues of an industry that was already on its knees. News publishers must choose whether to demand editors write less about COVID and protect revenues, or continue to allow editors to write about COVID, but accept that their revenues will suffer.

EntityX has developed a radical new technology that can more accurately understand the meaning of a web page. This project extends, transforms and accelerates that existing technology, to produce an enhanced brand safety tool. This new brand safety tool will enable publishers to unblock their inventory, by identifying the articles that mention 'COVID' that are brand safe, thereby unlocking the true value of previously blocked inventory, providing stable revenues and helping publishers to recover and maintain independent news coverage.

Our solution will be particularly helpful to local and regional news publishers, who have been disproportionately affected by the impact of brand safety tools blocking 'COVID' pages, but have the least resources to develop technological solutions. This solution empowers local news publishers, upholding community news, local democracy and accountability, by unlocking advertising revenue previously blocked by 'COVID'.

By making digital content more profitable, this solution supports and accelerates the long term trend towards digital and away from printed newspapers, thus directly helping reduce the carbon footprint and reducing the need for tonnes of paper.