The report highlights a growing imbalance: while global advertising revenues continue to expand — driven largely by digital platforms — the share reaching news organizations has declined sharply. It attributes this shift to the concentration of market power among a small number of dominant technology companies, the opacity of programmatic advertising systems, and incentive structures that favor low-quality or harmful content over public-interest journalism. As a result, significant portions of advertising spending are lost to intermediaries, fraud, and “made-for-advertising” websites, while news outlets face increasing difficulty sustaining their operations.
Beyond diagnosis, the brief reviews a range of initiatives developed by advertisers, publishers, and civil society to redirect advertising revenues toward quality media and to mitigate the distortions of the current system. Among these, the Samir Kassir Foundation’s initiative, Agency for Equality, developed in partnership with ERIM, is cited as a key example. The initiative works to connect advertisers with independent media outlets and has supported campaigns across the region, illustrating both the potential and the limitations of such approaches within the existing market structure.
SKF contributed to the discussions that informed this policy brief, alongside a broad network of international experts. The report ultimately calls for structural reforms, combining transparency measures, regulatory action, and targeted incentives, to ensure that the digital advertising market better supports independent journalism and access to reliable information.
