Expert Opinion

Brand safety has been significantly impacted by the evolution of technology, content, and sharing platforms. In just 25 years, brand safety has evolved from the pre-digital dark ages to the forefront of advertising technology. In the pre-digital era, brand safety largely consisted of tangible issues such as poor product placement, trademark infringement, and bad press. Simple isn’t always better though, it was hard to target, scale, and measure campaigns, and a lot of creative energy was wasted on things computers now can do. A brand’s safety concerns today include more than just traditional print advertising, including websites, blogs, and social media platforms. Marketers and advertisers must now change their approaches to brand safety as a result. Here’s how brand safety has evolved over the years: Prior to Digital Marketing  In the past, advertisers used billboard ads and print ads to entice customers to make a purchase. During that time period, these methods were effective, but they posed brand safety concerns. The placement of ads could negatively impact a company’s reputation. In the past (and still today) advertisers were concerned with: Placing the logo incorrectly. It only takes something like a Turkish Airlines ad on the side of an escalator having an aeroplane flying straight into the ground or a Starbucks sliding door van failure to turn a basic logo placement and brand name into a negative one. You see Starbucks ‘logo followed by “Sucks” as you close the door of the van. This is a prime example of the poor placement of a logo. Poorly placed products. The placement of certain products next to items in the store could also undermine brand safety. Imagine you are in the grocery store and see a display of condoms next to the kid’s section. Your reaction? We’ll let you fill in the blanks, but there’s likely to be nothing positive. Products that are used negatively. The backlash against a brand as a result of products being used for a negative purpose is not new. A famous example of it is the 1994 white Bronco chase involving O.J. Simpson, which predates digital marketing. Thanks to Simpson, the Ford Bronco became infamous. People immediately think of Simpson’s getaway vehicle when they hear the word Bronco. This is not what Ford intended. These are just a few of the obstacles advertisers faced. After digital marketing burst onto the scene, these issues developed into a whole new set of problems. After Digital Marketing  As digital advertising evolved from traditional advertising and reached a wider audience, it also raised concerns about brand safety. Here are some of them: Poor programmatic ad placements. In addition to poor product placement, programmatic ads have also been placed next to non-brand safe images and articles and on unsavoury websites. As an example, Applebee’s dancing cowboy commercial appeared on CNN on a split-screen alongside the headline “Russia invades Ukraine”. The QSR chain reported its disappointment to CNN and stopped spending with the broadcaster. Hijacking your brand by rogue groups. In an anti-marriage equality ad, Meghan Trainor’s brand and likeness were used without her permission. A group of individuals stole her image from the internet and used it to make their own propaganda. Trainer soon found herself dealing with the damage. She’s not the only one. Also, the TIKI torch brand was inadvertently linked to a brand safety issue when they were used at a white supremacist rally. Disastrous PR and influencers. Influencers work with brands to increase audience reach. Nevertheless, sometimes this can backfire for both the influencer and the brand. Consider yourself an influential figure like beauty guru Huda Kattan. You are featured in an ad for Sephora that appears on an unsavoury website. Or perhaps Kattan has a PR disaster, and Sephora is forced to decide whether or not to continue running her ads (not unlike Papa John’s). Either scenario could be disastrous. The negative effects of YouTube. YouTube lost 5% of its top North American advertisers due to brand safety in 2017. The key cause: Ads were being served on extremist content. Top brands such as Netflix, Nissan, Under Armour, and others were affected by this major brand safety issue. Nissan and Under Armour decided to pause their YouTube ads because of this. It’s time to take control of advertising  Brand safety is fluid in digital marketing. It is difficult to enforce and regulate because there is no universal rating system. Advertising placements that are negative for one company may be beneficial for another. What’s more concerning is that YouTube is asking creators to rate their own videos given the massive amount of content they have to control. Creators aren’t unbiased, and most aren’t familiar with offensive or safe content. Marketers and advertisers need to move beyond antiquated thinking and focus on how to deal with brand safety right now. Engage with a brand safety solution provider such as mFilterIt and be assured that your digital assets are devoid of threats. We help in protecting your brand reputation by keeping your assets away from high-risk digital content for both web and app. Get in touch to know more. To know more, get in touch with our experts today!

Nearly 90% of consumers believe that ensuring ads don’t appear next to unsuitable content is a “brand responsibility.” Brands create their identity in the market and in customers’ minds through marketing and advertising efforts. However, their brand identities are put at stake whenever their digital assets appear next to unsavory content. The rise of unsafe digital environments, ad fraud, and evolving methods of cybercrime constantly fuel this relentlessly growing fire, always keeping the brands on their toes. Defining parameters for safeguarding the personality, i.e., incorporating brand suitability, has become paramount. Brand suitability is an extension of brand safety, as it avoids serving ads next to bad content. Deciding the relevant ad placements offers many advantages to the brand, e.g., better engagements, revenue, affiliate associations, etc. According to the IAB report, new brands have witnessed a 44% increase in ad engagement due to ad relevancy with the content. Incorporating brand suitability certainly helps to enhance user experience, and ROAS (Return on Advertising Spends), and drive positive associations with customers, reputable affiliates, and potential investors. The following steps can help your organization to set brand suitability standards: 3 Steps to Set Your Brand Suitability Standards Step 1: Create a Whitelist Selecting the content suitable for the ad placements requires figuring out the most suitable domains/URLs. At this point, many brands don’t want to appear next to Ukraine war news, as it could drive unwanted traffic, deplete the advertising budget quicker than their estimated time and deliver results lower than expectations. Making a content/context whitelist is one way of dealing with unwanted traffic on your ads. Brand suitability also includes defining the best context/content placements for boosting the ad relevancy, engagement with the customer, targeting the correct audience, etc. The affirmation of knowing that the ad is appearing in suitable environments and has high relevancy offers relief. But recently, we also uncovered that websites are often miscategorized. For example, Vogue is considered an adult website. Creating content/context whitelists for the ads is challenging, and comes with a few drawbacks, such as limited reach, but it can increase the ad relevancy and prevent unsavory content next to the ads. Simultaneously, selecting a whitelisting would drain the advertising spend faster than campaigns without them, but what feature doesn’t come with drawbacks? Step 2: Define the Exact Content Segments The need to blocklist irrelevant content/context ad placements has already been established. By doing so, you would increase target reach, drive conversions, and increase revenue or ROAS. Moreover, contextual targeting of products/services aligned with the brand personality helps brands to reach a niche audience, instead of targeting the general population or wider nest of the category, a majority of which is not interested in the ad or just wants to research/explore it. For example, your brand has recently launched a sedan car model and wants to increase sales. Brand suitability would ensure that the ads reach the relevant audience, boost brand awareness, and increase calls/queries related to the model by selecting the correct category niche and selecting a potential allowlist/whitelist. Step 3: Validate Vendor Sources Knowing the REAL sources of a publisher’s traffic is essential for many reasons. Primarily, your ad and competitor’s ads could get placed next to the same content. So, the reachability could get substantially hampered. But, even if that doesn’t matter, the “type of content” or the “content piece” should certainly matter, as irrelevant content can diminish ad campaign results and brand reputation. But, validating the vendor sources doesn’t come as easy. Brands need to constantly monitor the placement of their ads on apps and websites, especially if they are using pre- and post-bid programmatic advertising platforms. Continuously updating the whitelist and blocklist of URLs would enhance ad relevancy and reach the target audience. mFilterIt’s Brand Hygiene protection can offer this solution to brands and even trigger alerts whenever the ads appear on URLs not selected by the brand. This would keep the vendors or affiliates in check and enable the brand to avoid damage to its ROAS as well as its brand reputation. One Solution to Meet the Ad Placement Needs of Your Brand mFilterIt’s Brand Hygiene Protection covers all areas of brand, safety, brand infringement, and suitability, offering wholesome measures and results for dealing with misplaced ads, affiliate malpractices, etc. The solution defines the optimal placement sources after analyzing the platforms and content pieces, without the influence of domain/URL miscategorization. Our contextual analysis enables us to avoid misplacements that harm the brand’s character. Moreover, the solution works after the brand defines the personality and uses GARM standards. Brands can achieve higher relevance, revenue, and target audience by implementing mFilterIt’s Brand Hygiene Protection. The solution helps to keep ads away from unsafe environments, fraud affiliates, and untrustworthy publishers. Get in touch to learn more about the Brand Suitability.