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Charlamagne Tha God is taking on advertisers over the concept of “brand safety.”
The prominent radio host of iHeartMedia’s “The Breakfast Club” spoke at the IAB’s Podcast Upfront in New York on Tuesday to promote podcasts to advertisers. He said the “whole concept of brand safety” is a “problem.”
“That’s just subjective,” he said onstage in conversation with measurement giant Nielsen. “You look at somebody and you look at their audience and you say they’re not necessarily safe. What does that mean? There was a time a couple of years ago they were saying Judy Blume books weren’t safe — Judy Blume! You should say maybe that audience doesn’t necessarily align with my brand. But if you deem what’s safe and not safe, that’s not up to you, that’s up to the consumer.”
It’s an argument that many critics of “brand safety” have made: If a show or host has millions of followers, it’s short-sighted to call them and their fans “unsafe.”
The term and its associated industry grew out of the automation of digital ad buying. It was meant to ensure brands’ ads didn’t show up next to controversial content like violence or porn. Over time, the practice has been criticized for helping steer advertisers away from stories about topics like the COVID-19 pandemic on legitimate news outlets, depriving them of ad dollars that underpin their businesses.
“Brand safety” has also landed in the culture wars in the era of President Donald Trump, with some painting it as anti-conservative. In investigations and lawsuits, lawmakers and other high-profile conservatives have argued that the practice unfairly punished right-leaning outlets. Last year, The Daily Wire’s cofounder Ben Shapiro testified that the site had been unfairly shunned by major advertisers and ad agencies who, he said, had deemed its content unsafe for their brands. As a result of all this, many advertisers have switched to the term “brand suitability” to distance themselves from politics.
Charlamagne, whose real name is Lenard McKelvey, also talked up the value of the podcast medium and how it complements radio.
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“You can’t just have one form of content,” he said. “Like, if you have that radio show every day, you got to put it out on the podcast. You got to put it out on YouTube. You got to put the clips out on social media.”
He also talked about the importance of paying attention to a show’s host and content, and not just to the audience size.
“Sometimes you have to not just look into the audience and how large the audience is and actually listen to the personality or listen to what the show is about,” he said. “And say, you know, ‘I think my brand will align with that.’ Because you can tell when somebody is just getting paid to do something. The read sounds generic, the read just sounds basic.”
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