DUBAI: Coca-Cola, a major force in global advertising, announced on Friday it would suspend ads on social media for at least 30 days, as platforms face a reckoning over how they deal with racist content.
“There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media,” James Quincey, chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, said in a brief statement.
He said that social media companies, which other major brands have boycotted to force changes in how they deal with hateful material, need to provide “greater accountability and transparency.”
Coca-Cola will use the pause to “reassess our advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed,” Quincey said.
The beverage giant told CNBC that the “break” does not mean it is joining the movement launched last week by African American and civil society groups.
The coalition, which includes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has been urging companies to stop advertising on Facebook, using the #StopHateForProfit hashtag.
It aims to achieve better regulation of groups inciting hatred, racism or violence on the platform.
Unilever, home to brands including Lipton tea and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, said it would stop advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in the US until the end of 2020 due to the “polarized election period.”
Facebook said on Friday that it would ban a “wider category of hateful content” in ads as the embattled social media giant moved to respond to widening protests over its handling of inflammatory posts.
Coca-Cola to pause social advertising
https://arab.news/56zj2
Coca-Cola to pause social advertising
- Coca-Cola will use the pause to reassess its advertising policies to determine whether revisions are needed
- “There is no place for racism in the world and there is no place for racism on social media,” the CEO of The Coca-Cola Company said
Semafor targets Gulf expansion after first profitable year
- Digital news brand generates $2m in earnings on $40m of revenue in 2025, and raises $30m in new financing
- Platform aims to be the ‘business and financial news brand of record for the Gulf,’ CEO says, and to ‘blanket the world’ within 2 years
DUBAI: Digital news platform Semafor generated $2 million in earnings in 2025 before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, on revenue of $40 million, marking its first year of profitability.
It also closed $30 million in new financing, which it plans to use to grow its editorial operations and live events business.
These achievements are particularly notable at a time when the global news industry is facing declining revenues and the erosion of audience trust, the company said.
Justin B. Smith, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told Arab News that Semafor’s model and approach is distinguished by several factors, which can be encapsulated by its vision of building a news product to “serve consumers that are increasingly not trusting news, but also designed with a business model that could deliver sustainable economic advantage.”
Following its first profitable year and armed with new funding, Semafor, founded in 2022, now plans an accelerated phase of global expansion with a focus on scaling editorial output and global convenings.
The company said it will broaden its publication schedule in the year ahead. Semafor Gulf and Semafor Business will become daily publications as the platform increases the frequency of its “first-read” services, which are daily briefings designed to showcase “front page” news and intended to serve as the “first read” for audiences, Smith said.
The Gulf edition of Semafor launched in September 2024, with former Dow Jones reporter Mohammed Sergie as editor. In 2025 Matthew Martin was appointed its Saudi Arabia bureau chief.
Semafor’s brand slogan is “intelligence for the new world economy” and “the Gulf is the epicenter of the new world economy,” Smith said. Currently, its Gulf operation employs eight journalists, based in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and as it moves to a daily publishing schedule it plans to significantly bolster its editorial team, both in existing markets and new ones, such as Qatar.
Semafor is “obsessed with the business, financial and economic story” in the region and aims to become “the business and financial news brand of record for the Gulf,” Smith said.
In the US, Semafor DC, currently published daily, will move to a twice-a-day format in March. In addition, the company’s flagship annual Semafor World Economy platform in Washington will expand this year from a three-day event to five days, with extended programming. The event, in April, is expected to attract more than 400 global CEOs, more than double the number that took part in 2025.
In addition to the US and the Gulf, Semafor currently operates in Africa. It held its first event in the Gulf region last month, during Abu Dhabi Finance Week, and said it is now looking to grow its events footprint across the Gulf, and into Asia. It will launch a China edition next month, its first foray into Asia, and plans to launch in Europe in 2027, followed eventually by Latin America.
Within the next two years, Semafor aims to have “blanketed the whole world” and become a mature, global intelligence and news brand competing with the “greatest legacy business and financial news brands in the world,” Smith said.
“Our goal is to become the leading global intelligence and news company for the world, founded on independent, high-quality content and convenings,” he added.
