Meta’s Free-Speech Shift Made It Clear to Advertisers: ‘Brand Safety’ Is Out of Vogue - WSJ
Brand safety “has become politicized and it was never motivated by politics,” said Brad Jakeman, a former marketer at PepsiCo. The movement around brand safety happened because “we heard from our consumers that they felt uncomfortable with our brands being connected to content that they found offensive,” he said.
In December, just days after advertising giant Omnicom agreed to acquire Interpublic, Jordan launched a probe into the merger, seeking information on the companies’ ties to the trade group that Musk sued. Among the requests made in Jordan’s letter to Omnicom’s CEO: “all documents and communications related to so-called ‘brand safety.’” Ad executives say they are wary of putting a target on their backs by speaking up about brand safety, and some agencies are now reluctant to send clients “point-of-view” memos on the topic when online controversies arise.
(My emphasis). This is the chilling effect of Trumpism, which extends a long way beyond his executive power. It’s the ability to make people and companies believe that it’s simply not worth the hassle to go up against them, to rely on the expense and inconvenience of doing anything which may be percieved as not being in line with them. In the end, people will censor themselves.