New "Media Roundtable" Initiative Encourages Brands To Support Truth and Civility in Media
Oxford Road, a leading audio ad agency, has partnered with Ad Fontes Media to introduce new brand safety tools to make better-informed advertising decisions
Initiative offers first-of-its-kind “Podcast Bias & Reliability Chart,”
to monitor audio content as podcast industry poised to eclipse $1B in 2021
Los Angeles, CA –– March 18, 2021– Oxford Road, the leading Los Angeles-based audio ad agency that develops and places millions of ads on America’s top podcasts, radio, and other digital media, today announced a new flagship initiative, “Media Roundtable,” in partnership with Colorado-based media intelligence company Ad Fontes Media. Ad Fontes Media is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart®, an easy-to-understand, news reliability, and bias rating system first introduced in 2018.
The Media Roundtable, launched today, will allow brands and advertisers to better understand the content they are financially supporting, and also take direct action to address the growing divisiveness and discord Americans are seeing across many forms of media. The group will equip brands with tools and resources to enable them to move their ad dollars towards media that supports the core values they support.
“Since 2013, we have helped hundreds of brands launch their first major advertising campaigns, often placing brands on opinion-driven shows and podcasts that sometimes reinforce an ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality,” said Dan Granger, CEO and founder of Oxford Road and Co-Founder of the Media Roundtable. “Companies are struggling to balance their business objectives with their brand values. Now, with Media Roundtable, we’re able to offer solutions for brands to better understand the content they are sponsoring, and proactively ensure that when they spend money on ad-supported media, it aligns with their company and its stakeholders.”
Advertisers, marketers, and media professionals join the new Media Roundtable by signing an industry-wide six-point pledge, in which they vow to support content and platforms that support Clarity, Truth, Fairness, Respect, De-escalation, and Tolerance.
Media Roundtable members also receive important tools for brand safety and support, including discounted access to the first-of-its-kind “Podcast Bias & Reliability Chart,” a key area of interest for many advertising brands. The podcast chart, created by partner Ad Fontes Media, uses data-driven metrics to analyze America’s top-rated news and political opinion podcasts. Brands can use the chart to better understand where news and politics podcasts fall in terms of reliability and bias and avoid financially sponsoring misleading or divisive content.
Other Media Roundtable partners include the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD) and the Cambridge Negotiation Institute, which can step in as a resource for advertisers who find themselves needing to balance the competing needs for balancing brand values and business objectives for their stakeholders in high profile controversy or in association with contentious media outlets.
“We’re helping ad buyers be more mindful about both the content they sponsor in order to advance programs that are more edifying than destructive,” Granger said.
The Media Roundtable is also being promoted through a new podcast series in partnership with PodcastOne, which began in January 2021, featuring interviews with Carl Cameron, former Chief White House Correspondent for FOX News and a FOX journalist for 20 years, former CNN journalist Frank Sesno and journalist David French, senior editor of The Dispatch.
The 2020 season, entitled “The Divided States of Media,” featured in-depth conversations on all aspects of civil discourse in media with top leaders across the American media, political, and business spectrum, including: Carly Fiorina, Bob Garfield, Katie Herzog, Steve Krakauer, Newt Gingrich, and Matthew Yglesias, among others. The series of conversations inspired the establishment of the Media Roundtable.
For more information about the Media Roundtable and how to get involved, please contact: info@mediaroundtable.com
About Media Roundtable
Media Roundtable is a non-partisan organization undertaken by a coalition of leading American organizations and individuals to restore dignity, integrity, and trust in American media. The organizers include Keith Allred, Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse; Dan Granger, Founder and CEO of Oxford Road and Host of the “The Media Roundtable” podcast series; Vanessa Otero, Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media and creator of The Media Bias Chart; and Bob Bordone, Founder and Principal of the Cambridge Negotiation Institute.