Commercial bosses at Reach and Buzzfeed have slammed the use of advertising keyword blacklists that stifle publishers’ ability to make money from hard news online.

Piers North, chief revenue officer at national and regional publisher Reach, told Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference that unless the issue is tackled, publishers could see no choice but to ditch serious topics and write about “cats on skateboards”.

For years blocklisting, a term created by amalgamating blocking and blacklist, has led to publishers appealing to advertisers and agencies not to rely on crude keywords to stop advertising appearing on pages featuring words like “terror”, “shoot” or “war”. It was a threat during the Covid-19 pandemic, when traffic was at record highs but ad revenue did not follow.