
From a monetization perspective, few challenges loom as large for news publishers as content overblocking.

Legacy brand safety tools were never designed to navigate the dynamic nature of news. Instead, they rely on rigid categories, blunt keyword lists, and superficial sentiment analysis. The result? High-quality, professionally produced journalism is routinely excluded from campaigns – not because it’s unsafe, but because the systems in place lack the nuance to understand it and make informed decisions. 

This is exactly the kind of problem Brand Standards was designed to solve. Our new agentic brand safety and suitability solution helps news publishers recover lost revenue and monetize quality journalism confidently and at scale.

## The problem: premium content caught in a rigid, outdated filter

Historically, both established news outlets and platforms with monetizable news media have been penalized by legacy brand safety and suitability solutions for simply producing or distributing news content.

Reporting on topics like politics, climate change, or crime can trigger keyword blocklists, even when the content is measured, factual, and appropriate for advertising.

What gets missed in these blocks is the full picture:
- **News media offers a premium advertising opportunity.** Professionally produced journalism offers high-quality, trusted environments that attract engaged audiences, making it a powerful, underutilized channel for brand investment.
- **News content is diverse.** It spans everything from arts and culture to sports and science. It is not inherently problematic, political, or polarizing.
- **Suitability is subjective.** Suitability isn’t one-size-fits-all. For example, an airline might avoid ads next to stories about flight delays, but those same articles could be perfect for a car company or insurance brand. Different brands have different comfort zones, and brand safety tools need to respect that.
- **Local news commands deep trust.** Local news in particular commands deep consumer trust and meaningful engagement, making it a powerful advertising vehicle for brands.

When news content is blocked in blanket fashion from campaigns, advertisers miss significant opportunities to reach consumers in premium contexts and newsrooms suffer as a result.

For publishers, the stakes are clear: over-reaching brand safety tools throttle revenue, undervalue inventory, and limit crucial revenue streams, resulting in a demonetization of quality journalism.

## The solution: Scope3 Brand Standards

Scope3’s Brand Standards offers a smarter, LLM-powered solution that far exceeds keyword blocking and category exclusion.

Built on agentic AI, Brand Standards enables advertisers to place ads in news inventory confidently and responsibly. It blocks truly unsafe content that could harm a brand’s image, while unlocking the reach and performance benefits of high-quality journalism.

Here’s how it works:
- **Custom, brand-defined models**: Each advertiser defines their own boundaries. An auto brand may be comfortable placing an ad adjacent to political coverage; a CPG brand may not. With Brand Standards, each brand’s values are modeled and enforced with precision.
- **LLM-powered analysis**: Every piece of relevant media is analyzed in full context using LLMs to accurately understand the content and determine if it aligns with a given brand’s unique suitability preferences.
- **Real-time classification**: News moves fast. Our agents do too, evaluating content as it’s published, so advertisers can safely support evolving stories without fear of appearing in the wrong place.
- **Plain-language explanations**: Publishers and brands can see exactly what’s being blocked, and why, enabling smarter refinements over time. And, for the first time, publishers can request review of classifications they disagree with – unlocking a new dynamic between buyer and seller. 

![artifact classification report](/marketing/blog/how-scope3-brand-standards-solves-for-overblocking-of-news-content/image1.webp)
*Brand Standards provides URL-level transparency into classifications, with in-depth insight into how each artifact is categorized across buyer model types with the option to request a review when appropriate.*

## Why this matters for news publishers

Scope3 Brand Standards reframes brand safety and suitability as a pathway to more sustainable monetization for news publishers. With this approach, news publishers can:
- Reclaim revenue from previously blocked but entirely suitable content
- Strengthen trust with advertiser partners by demonstrating safe, strategic ad delivery
- Give ad ops teams better visibility into blocking behaviors with the ability to take action
- Preserve the editorial integrity of the newsroom

News shouldn’t be treated as a liability. Instead, it should be seen for what it is: a powerful marketing channel that offers advertisers access to premium, professionally-produced content and highly-engaged audiences.

## What industry leaders are saying

BuzzFeed, owner of HuffPost, recently shared their thoughts on Brand Standards at Scope3’s Story Time, highlighting how greater transparency and control are changing the conversation around brand safety.

"Scope3's transparency and innovation are exciting." said Jason Nadel, VP of Revenue Operations at BuzzFeed. "Giving buyers the power to see how articles are classified and appeal those designations will fundamentally change how brand safety is discussed and deployed. I'm optimistic this new, agentic approach will give buyers more confidence to invest in quality news websites."

Want to hear more? Watch this brief Story Time highlight featuring BuzzFeed’s Jason Nadel in a candid discussion on how Brand Standards is reshaping suitability strategies for publishers and buyers alike.

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</video>

Want more? [Check out the full session recording here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBcMKQiltFY).

## Ready to get started?

Scope3 Brand Standards helps unlock the full monetization potential for news publishers while ensuring the right brands show up next to the right stories. With Brand Standards agents at work in the digital advertising ecosystem, publishers can monetize their content and brands can advertise with confidence.

Ready to unlock revenue from your news content? Get started with Scope3 Brand Standards for free today to see exactly how your content is categorized.  

<a class="cta-button" href="/?authType=sign-up">Get Started</a>


From a monetization perspective, few challenges loom as large for news publishers as content overblocking. This is exactly the kind of problem Brand Standards was designed to solve. Our new agentic brand safety and suitability solution helps news publishers recover lost revenue and monetize quality journalism – confidently and at scale.

How Scope3 Brand Standards Solves for Overblocking of News Content


The media ecosystem is overdue for reform. Marketers are under pressure to reduce emissions, avoid low-quality inventory, and drive better outcomes. Unfortunately, the systems that they’re using to do so were designed for a bygone era.

Agentic advertising provides brands and agencies with a smarter way forward. Built on AI agents that can reason, plan, and take action, this approach aligns every impression with outcomes that really matter, all without forcing you to change platforms or overhaul workflows.
Here’s what every team needs to know about agentic media.

## 1. Better campaigns start with better signals

Most systems base buying decisions on limited or outdated data. Scope3 lights a clearer path, enriching every bid or purchasing decision with real-time insights, including carbon emissions, media quality, IVT, and brand suitability.

These deeper signals feed directly into the agent’s decisioning process. When campaigns are guided by more relevant data, the inventory selected is more aligned with brand values and performance goals.

## 2. Transparent media buying gives you back control

Most platforms limit visibility into where ads run and how buying decisions are made. Optimization happens behind the scenes, and in many cases is based on outdated or overly simplistic signals.

With Brand Standards, Scope3 puts you back in the driver’s seat. Our configurable rules let you define which inventory qualifies as acceptable on the basis of emissions, context, publisher quality, and more. Once you’ve set them, these standards automatically guide every impression in real time.

Most other optimization engines still rely on signals like click-through rate and CPM; however, these won’t always reflect your brand’s priorities, and the resulting misalignments could lead to spend on wasteful inventory.

Scope3 takes a different approach. Our intelligent media agents are trained to enforce your standards, make informed decisions with them in mind, and consistently apply them across the supply chain. This creates a system that mirrors your strategy and that you control—rather than one that operates independently of your vision.

## 3. You don’t need to sacrifice performance for sustainability

The idea that climate-conscious media comes at the cost of results is outdated. In reality, high-emission inventory tends to be low-quality, fraud-prone, and underperforming. It’s no wonder then that when brands remove it, they see stronger outcomes and lower emissions.

Scope3 enables this optimization directly. With the Agentic Media Platform, brands can model how different campaign strategies such as stricter carbon limits or tighter brand suitability filters might affect quality, cost, and available scale. From there, all that’s left to do is activate the mix that best fits their campaign.

## 4. You can get started using the tools you already have

Today, Scope3 supports deployment of your brand agent on Meta, The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP and Index Exchange. That means you can deploy agentic strategies inside your existing workflows without skipping a beat.

In short, activation is quick, results are immediately measurable, and the system will improve over time as your agent learns.

For these reasons, agentic is truly the advertising of tomorrow—one that restores control to brands while raising the bar for media quality, sustainability, and performance.

Curious to see how it works in practice? Let Scope3’s expert teams help you build your first agent.

The media buying landscape needs an overhaul. While marketers face pressure to reduce emissions and improve campaign quality, they're using outdated systems that weren't designed for today's challenges. Scope3's agentic advertising platform uses AI-powered agents that make smarter buying decisions in real-time, enriching every bid with data on carbon emissions, media quality, and brand suitability. The platform offers configurable Brand Standards that automatically enforce your criteria and integrates seamlessly with existing tools like Meta, The Trade Desk, and Amazon DSP. The result is media buying that aligns every impression with your brand values and performance goals, proving that sustainability and results aren't mutually exclusive—all without requiring platform changes or workflow disruptions.

AI Agents in Media Buying: How Agentic Advertising Solves Performance and Sustainability Challenges


The rapid adoption of AI will accelerate innovation, but it also presents significant new environmental challenges.

At Scope3, we’ve been considering what this means for the industry and our partners, as well as our role in creating a sustainable advertising ecosystem.

This summer, we took action and are excited to share our efforts. We developed a methodology to measure the carbon footprint and water use of generative AI, which we’ve released for public feedback this week [here](https://preview.methodology.scope3.com/overview).

We also secured $25 million in funding to bolster these initiatives — an investment that will help us advance our mission while tackling the complexities of AI’s environmental impact (read the details in [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/10/scope3-starts-tracking-the-carbon-footprint-of-ai/) or below).

**Want to learn more about what we’re building?** Subscribe to our new Substack, [Sustainable AI](https://sustainableai.substack.com/p/welcome), where we’ll share insights and updates on our journey toward sustainable AI.

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## **Scope3 Raises $25M in Strategic Funding to Expand into Sustainable AI**

**NEW YORK – 10 October 10 2024**  – Scope3, the collaborative sustainability platform decarbonizing media and advertising, today announced the closing of $25 million in a strategic funding round led by GV. The round included participation from existing investors Venrock, Room40 Ventures, and Craft Ventures, as well as from new investors Aperiam Ventures and Virgo Strategic Investments. The investment will enable Scope3 to expand its work beyond the advertising ecosystem and tackle the pressing climate impact of the booming AI industry.

Since its inception in 2021, Scope3 has been a pioneer in sustainable digital media. Through its ad campaign sustainability solutions and open-source methodology, Scope3 has supplied the media and advertising industries with tools to analyze and reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing ROI, cost or business success. Thousands of brands use Scope3 to measure and decarbonize their media – including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Mastercard, Sanofi, and more – and nearly 3,000 metric tons of carbon emissions have been avoided by using Scope3’s Green Media Products in the last 18 months. 

Decarbonization solutions are gaining serious traction across the industry — usage revenue of Scope3 has grown 12x YoY (Q2 ‘23 → Q2 ‘24). Now, as AI innovation hits an inflection point and the environmental impact is coming to light, Scope3 is taking its proven approach to decarbonizing the advertising and media supply chain and applying it to AI.

At a time when the climate crisis grows more pressing and severe by the day, the rapid adoption of AI is leaving significant environmental repercussions in its wake. The training process for a single AI model consumes thousands of megawatt hours of electricity and emits hundreds of tons of carbon. Companies across the board are increasingly facing pressure to implement AI strategies while trying to meet climate commitments, and they are struggling to find a clear solution to keep emissions under control. With the marketing industry leading the rapid adoption of AI, Scope3 is uniquely positioned to help companies balance their sustainability goals without compromising their AI ambitions that drive innovation and business success.

“AI and the media industry are soon going to be indistinguishable,” said Brian O’Kelley, Co-Founder and CEO of Scope3. “The biggest AI players are monetizing through advertising, just like the search giants before them, and every marketer is using AI to create the content that fuels their campaigns. That’s why extending our methodology to capture the climate impact of AI is imperative, both for our business and the industry as a whole.”

"The most innovative companies in the world are considering sustainable AI practices that address environmental concerns while delivering real business value. Scope3 has the talent, technology, and expertise needed to decarbonize the media and advertising industry," said Erik Nordlander, General Partner at GV.  "We've seen the impact Brian O'Kelley and the Scope3 team have had on the advertising and marketing supply chain, and we're excited to double down on our investment based on the traction we've seen. We're proud to deepen our partnership with Brian and support Scope3's mission as we move toward a more sustainable future."

Alongside the funding, Scope3 released its AI methodology to the public. This methodology sheds light on the digital waste produced by the AI supply chain by precisely tracing and measuring the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of an AI product, process or service. This ultimately enables every company using AI to make data-driven strategies on when, how and where to apply different AI solutions to reduce their carbon footprints and maximize the efficacy of their AI investments.


At a time when the climate crisis grows more pressing and severe by the day, the rapid adoption of AI is leaving significant environmental repercussions in its wake. Scope3 has a plan to tackle it.

Scope3 Expands to Sustainable AI, Releases AI Methodology and Lands $25M in New Funding


A new report by the ANA in partnership with Scope3 explains the carbon cost of digital marketing, the solution to measuring and reducing emissions, and how Fortune 100 brands have already achieved success with those solutions.

Critically, the original data in the report supports the claim that sustainability and growth aren’t at odds. The findings highlight how limiting the waste in your marketing program can be beneficial both for business outcomes and sustainability.

Coca-Cola, GM, Kimberly Clark, Kroger, Mars, and Mondelez used three key approaches to slash their emissions. Adopting green private marketplaces (GMPs) proved to be the most effective, followed by inclusion lists, and then exclusion lists. 

By incorporating sustainability into their media plans, brands reduced emissions as much as 36%. The study also revealed that 2% of media sites account for a whopping 50% of total emissions, underscoring the progress brands can make within days of measuring their emissions by optimizing away from high-emissions sites. As the brands reduced their carbon emissions, they also saw a positive impact on business outcomes. Brands were able to: 

- redistribute spend to high-quality sites
- hit KPIs earlier
- avoid overextending budgets trying to reach users on bad inventory

Download the report to learn more about the scope of the problem, the available solutions, and how simple and quick actions can reduce carbon and lead to greater media efficiency.


A new report by the ANA in partnership with Scope3 explains the carbon cost of digital marketing, the solution to measuring and reducing emissions, and how Fortune 100 brands have already achieved success with those solutions