Episode 9 - Vanessa Otero from Ad Fontes Media

Welcome to Episode 9 of the Breaking Through the Mayhem podcast, where we explore marketing and advertising in a time of constantly shifting risk and opportunity.

 

Brought to you by Sightly, our goal is to share the insights of industry leaders from brands, agencies, publishers, and partners as they discuss the challenges and possibilities emerging from the ever-shifting media landscape, such as real-time marketing, brand safety and purpose, influencers, cancel culture, data privacy, technology and more.

 

Today's guest is Vanessa Otero.

 

She is the CEO and Founder of Ad Fontes Media.

 

Vanessa Otero is the creator of the Media Bias Chart and the Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media. A former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado area, Vanessa holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. Vanessa's formal education and professional career has centered on analytical reading, writing, and reasoning, creating an ideal background for her to create a content analysis methodology for evaluating text. 

 

In 2016, Vanessa had been enjoying her life as a Patent Attorney, when the noise surrounding the Presidential Election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump became louder and louder. She noticed that people would share articles on Facebook that supported their side, but weren't very convincing to the other. Alarmed by the unhealthy state of the media ecosystem, Vanessa used her expertise in content analysis to create the original Media Bias Chart, and thus, the groundwork for what would later become Ad Fontes Media was laid. 

 

In 2018, she founded Ad Fontes Media to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart- namely, to meet the demand for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, as well as for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves. 

 

Today, Ad Fontes Media uses a systematic approach to content analysis in which a team of politically-balanced professional analysts examine and categorize news content creating data that is useful to news consumers, educators, marketers, and even publishers themselves. 

 

In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Vanessa discusses:

• How the viral Media Bias Chart led her to founding Ad Fontes Media 
• Why she thinks the Chart has resonated so deeply in the market
• Why investing in reputable journalism is just as important as avoiding misinformation