A study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, which is published by the American Medical Association, found that health care-related institutions … spent tens of millions in advertising dollars on news websites flagged by NewsGuard for spreading health misinformation.
… For the study, researchers from the Yale School of Medicine analyzed 11 news websites that were found by NewsGuard to publish false or egregiously misleading health information. The researchers tallied how much advertising was purchased on those sites between 2021 and 2024.
Advertising expenditures on the 11 sites totaled $336 million over the four-year period, the study found. Of this, 10.6 percent — $35.7 million — came from health care-related companies including major pharmaceutical and insurance firms, government health agencies, and nonprofit groups ….
In the past year alone, NewsGuard has identified advertisements for 355 major brands — such as Google, Walmart, and Disney — that appeared on 46 websites flagged for repeatedly publishing false or egregiously misleading content.
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According to a 2021 analysis by NewsGuard and Comscore, advertisers spend an estimated $2.6 billion a year on programmatic advertising on misinformation sites.
