Study: News outlets can’t run ‘native’ Exxon ads without misleading the public
A first-of-its-kind study found news outlets can reduce, but not eliminate the deceptive influence of fossil fuel industry ads designed to look like reporting.
“By researching existing life forms like algae and bacteria, ExxonMobil hopes one day to realize new sources for cleaner fuels at scale and, in the process, to make the future of energy literally green,” claims an article-length advertisement on the New York Times website.
Exxon’s “Future of Energy” ad, which began running on the New York Times website in 2018 and is still live today, describes company researchers toiling to farm and geoengineer algae biofuels in order to decrease the oil giant’s carbon footprint. It does not mention that compared to its plans for fossil fuel production, Exxon’s investments in algae research and production goals for the biofuels were a negligible fraction before they ended completely in 2023.
The ad is a classic example of a “native advertisement,” or a paid ad placed in news media publications and designed in-house to give it the appearance of journalistic reporting. And it’s part of an evolving — and often successful — effort by fossil fuel companies to “manipulate mass public opinion” about their role in the climate crisis using “misleading” advertising, according to new research published last week in the journal npj Climate Action by researchers at Boston University and the University of Cambridge.
The authors found that by exposing readers to “inoculation” messages warning about online climate disinformation prior to the advertisement, or by including a “disclosure” message stating who paid for the ad, news outlets can “reduce climate misperceptions caused by exposure to native advertising from the fossil fuel industry on readers.” But they emphasized that there is no way for outlets to run native ads for oil and gas companies without helping the industry deceive the public.
“Even a single exposure to misleading climate claims can shape beliefs,” the study concluded.
The new research could be used to bolster consumer fraud lawsuits against oil and gas companies, many of which cite ads like this one as evidence that the companies are still intentionally deceiving the public about the effect of their business on the climate.
Given the fossil fuel industry’s increasingly well-documented “history of deceptive communications” and existing studies showing how native advertising can confuse and mislead readers, there are “good reasons for concern that companies may use native ads to further fuel climate skepticism and delay climate action,” the authors write.
“In other words, we are concerned that native advertising may be a potent form of disinformation — one living at the heart of our fact-based communication system: the mainstream news media.”
“An accomplice”
Oil companies have been using mainstream media outlets to launder their messaging for nearly half a century. In the 1970s, Mobil and other companies began using “advertorials” — or paid editorials — in outlets like the New York Times, which were eventually used to question the link between fossil fuels and climate change.
About a decade ago, the companies started hiring in-house brand studios at major media outlets to create ads that are designed to appear like original reporting from that outlet. “It has a masthead, all the trappings of a news article, the style, the tone, but it’s actually paid content,” said Michelle Amazeen, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of mass communication and director of the Communication Research Center at Boston University’s College of Communication and core faculty at the Institute for Global Sustainability.
Amazeen’s prior research found that only one in 10 people who read a native advertisement recognize it as advertising rather than reporting. A variety of brands use sponsored content, but the new study is the first academic research to examine the effectiveness of fossil fuel companies’ use of native advertising to lend legitimacy to messages about climate change or their role in the energy transition.
“If we're talking about companies that are imitating news articles for brands that have significant impact on our understanding of science or what's happening to the earth, that seems more ethically fraught,” Amazeen said. “That's where I was really thinking, okay, there's a fossil fuel company that's trying to tell us about global energy consumption — what could go wrong there?”
Her new research tested readers’ responses to Exxon’s “Future of Energy” ad and found that it was “effective at influencing beliefs.”
An 2023 investigation from DeSmog and Drilled documented how “many of the world’s most trusted English-language news outlets regularly lend their reputations to the fossil fuel industry’s messaging on climate-related topics,” including its purported investments in clean energy, and technologies it claims will help solve climate change, like carbon capture.
Fossil fuel companies are well aware of how native advertising can benefit the industry in the long run, internal documents show. “Sponsored content advertising is a powerful way to reach a specific audience focused on specific issues,” reads one BP planning document obtained through a Congressional investigation. “We use sponsored content as a tool to push our messages directly to Washington, DC, elites who set and influence energy policy — and can decide whether we keep our license to operate.”
News outlets benefit from those partnerships, too: The New York Times alone made more than $20 million in ad revenue from fossil fuel company clients between October 2020 and October 2023, the DeSmog and Drilled report found.
For Exxon’s “Unexpected Energy” campaign, which included the “Future of Energy” ad, the New York Times’ in-house T Brand Studio worked with a PR firm to develop ads that would feel “native to the publication,” and which “mirrored the award-winning journalism of the world-renowned publication [to ensure] authenticity, credibility and relevance, and [be] ultimately more impactful to the audience,” according to another document obtained through Congressional subpoenas.
Major media outlets “have been instrumental to fossil fuel companies in helping to shape how the public and policy makers perceive the oil industry and its contributions to society,” the new study authors write. “As the fossil fuel industry continues to spread disinformation throughout media platforms around the globe, an institution positioned as a bulwark to this threat — the news media — has been an accomplice.”
What can be done
Two strategies alleviated, but did not erase, the impact of Exxon’s misleading advertisement on readers, researchers found.
Some participants in the nationally representative study were shown the advertisement through a social media post with a disclosure message stating who paid for the ad (such disclosure messages are absent on social media more than half of the time). Of those participants who were shown the New York Times’ disclosure message, nearly half recognized the post as a paid advertisement, versus just 22.3% who recognized the post as an ad without the disclosure.
Prior to seeing the ad, some study participants were exposed to an "inoculation message” — in this case, a message from U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres reminding readers to be wary of online misinformation about climate change. Those participants were more likely to be skeptical of Exxon’s misleading claims.
But compared with participants who didn’t view the ad at all, all of the participant groups who viewed the ad were afterward more likely to agree with positive statements about Exxon’s investments in climate solutions.
Amazeen emphasized that while inoculation messages and standardized, more prominent disclosures help prevent climate disinformation from spreading via native advertisements, “outlets should not be disguising paid content as a news article, full stop.”
In the courts
The research comes as state and local governments have filed lawsuits accusing oil giants, including Exxon, of deceiving the public about climate change. Massachusetts’ attorney general and other officials have cited Exxon’s “Future of Energy” ad as an example of how the company promotes “false and misleading” advertising to manipulate consumers in violation of state and local consumer protection laws.
Some of those lawsuits have faced challenges from judges who disagree about the effectiveness of such advertising. In a recent ruling dismissing New York City’s consumer fraud lawsuit against oil companies, a judge wrote that “The City cannot have it both ways by, on one hand, asserting that consumers are aware of and commercially sensitive to the fact that fossil fuels cause climate change, and, on the other hand, that the same consumers are being duped by Defendants’ failure to disclose that their fossil fuel products emit greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.”
Amazeen said she wanted to help fill the gap of research demonstrating the link between exposure to these types of ad campaigns and the perceptions of readers. “Here's some concrete, causal evidence that shows with even just one exposure, people's perceptions towards certain statements about the company are more favorable,” she said.
She hoped the study would help play a role in other lawsuits that have overcome oil industry motions to dismiss and are now progressing toward trial.
“There are no easy solutions when it's impossible to get misleading claims out of public discourse,” said Rebecca Tushnet, a First Amendment professor at Harvard Law School. “If taken seriously, this type of work would provide support for banning the misleading claims entirely because lesser measures don't fully protect the public, though courts are often reluctant to do so.”