AI-derived disinformation involved in elections across the world is one of the top concerns for the World Economic Forum, as cited in its “Global Risks Report 2024." Brands and advertisers already have a tough time trying to navigate social media with their own posts, avoiding placement next to or in tandem with fake, negative content from bots or scam accounts.

DoubleVerify CEO (DV) Mark Zagorski joins Yahoo Finance to give insight into the challenges that these companies face and how his business works with them to alleviate concerns and maneuver a multitude of social media challenges.

"What we found is consumers create a direct relationship between where a brand ends up and the kind of contents around it and their perspective on that brand. So it has a negative rub-off effect," Zagorski explains. "They're very concerned about it, and increasingly concerned about misinformation and disinformation, as well as hate speech. During years like this year, which is [an] election year and election years see heightened information or lack of information throughout the web."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

- How concerned are the advertisers you're working with about being next to this information, misinformation, or just things that are totally not what they're looking for?

MARK ZAGORSKI: Yeah. A core part of what we do for some of the biggest advertisers in the world is ensure that their spend in their ad placements aren't next to content that they're not comfortable with. And that can include everything from brand safety and suitability violations to what you mentioned, which is content that they consider to be hate speech or misinformation or disinformation.

Because what we found is consumers create a direct relationship between where a brand ends up and the kind of content that's around it and their perspective on that brand. So it has a negative rub off effect. They're very concerned about it and increasingly concerned about misinformation and disinformation as well as hate speech during years like this year, which is a election year.

An election year see heightened levels of all of that type of information or lack of information throughout the web.

- And so Mark, so they are concerned about it, your clients. What are some solutions there? What are you telling them?

MARK ZAGORSKI: Our goal is twofold. The first is we want them to avoid the content altogether. And we do that through specific filters, through programs that we work with on certain platforms, that allow them to avoid content that we believe and flagged is not being aligned with who they are and maybe misinformation or disinformation. So first thing we try to do is keep them away from the stuff.

The second is ensure that if their content or their ads did end up there, that there's an opportunity for them to re-build a plan in the future that doesn't involve those properties. So I think there is-- we have tools out there across social networks, across the open web, across connected television that allow them to do that. And those are the places where they fear being the best.

- Mark, when advertisers are looking at choices of where to advertise, are there places that they are just avoiding because they don't want to deal with this? I mean, we know a bunch of advertisers said they left X at one point. Typically when that happens, they trickle back. Are they trickling back or are they still avoiding it and going elsewhere?

MARK ZAGORSKI: Yeah. I think that's the last thing we want in the ad ecosystem, is advertisers just turning off platforms because they don't have the ability to use a scalpel instead of a meat cleaver for lack of a better analogy. We are seeing less of that because the tools that we're able to build and others in the space are able to build allow them to maneuver a little bit more finely.

Because there's no platform that's all bad in general. There's good content that can be found anywhere. We just have to help advertisers find that good content and be around that stuff as opposed to the stuff they're not comfortable with.