This article will explore the concept of brand safety in advertising, why it’s becoming a more significant priority, and the challenges of creating a brand-safe campaign – even with the help of AI.

The digital environment has always been relatively complicated. But since the global pandemic thrust the prevalence of online misinformation and disinformation into the spotlight, the ambivalent nature of online content and the potential risks of online advertising have proved increasingly difficult to navigate for brands.

With this in mind, protecting the reputation of a brand’s online presence is becoming increasingly important. In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about the subject as well as the solutions available to minimize any potential risk.

What is brand safety in advertising?

Brand safety is a term that describes the process of regulating where and when ads appear to avoid negative associations with controversial content. This can include content that is violent, extremist, or that contains hate speech, among other things.

Businesses have a number of tools to help prevent their ads from appearing alongside content they do not want to be associated with.

Keyword blockers are one of these tools. However, blocking out keywords is no silver bullet and their overzealous nature can lead to ads not appearing alongside safe and legitimate content, which can limit the reach of an advertising campaign and reduce its effectiveness. Furthermore, these lists can quickly become outdated or overly populated.

Why is brand safety becoming more of a priority?

Brand safety is becoming more crucial as a result of the importance of having a widespread online presence and the potential risks that go along with it.

The growth of independent digital media outlets has given rise to a greater range of issues concerning brand safety, such as ad fraud, fake news, hate speech, and inappropriate content. Consumers are more conscious of the content they consume as a result, and brands face reputational and financial risks.

When a person forms an opinion of a brand, they rely on a range of explicit, external signals such as messaging, online presence, ads, recommendations, and reviews in order to make a judgment.

By developing a consistent tone of voice, a brand can convey both its values and the quality of its products and services.

Delivering great customer service on top of that further contributes to building a positive reputation – with word of mouth still remaining one of the most trusted forms of organic advertising.

While brand messaging is fairly straightforward to control, implicit signals, such as where a brand’s ads appear and what kind of content and websites it becomes associated with, can be harder to manage.

The industry is aware of it too. A recent survey from Mediaocean found that 40% of marketing leaders across different industries expect an increase in concerns around brand safety.

However, IAB Europe’s 2023 Brand Safety poll revealed that more than half of industry professionals within the digital advertising space (53%) agreed that the industry has done a good job of tackling brand safety over the past 12 months – up from 36% in 2019.

Either way, brands do not want to risk alienating and losing customers by being linked to harmful content, and multiple studies have shown that brands that advertise in premium digital environments receive additional legitimacy by extension.

As the aphorism goes: show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.

Why is brand suitability important?

Brand suitability has emerged as a more tailored and individual approach to brand safety, one that takes specific brand needs, market research insights, context, and meaning into account when determining ideal advertising environments.

Traditionally, brand safety strategies have been very broad, involving techniques such as keyword blocking and URL blocklisting.

However, with the COVID-19 crisis in confidence alongside a never-ending torrent of online content, digital advertisers, agencies, and publishers have been looking for more control in their brand safety solutions.

Moreover, the volume and nature of online content – whether progressive or contentious – has intensified to the point where this kind of legacy protection often pits brand safety against scale and effectiveness.

For example, blanket exclusion lists might block news and entertainment sites for references to “violent” content, such as mentions of crime statistics or even scenes from a TV series, despite the website itself being a reputable and trustworthy source.

This caveat also predominantly impacts progressive and minority media. In 2022, for example, 65% of what tech firm Oracle terms progressive media content, which includes LGBTQ+ media, was blocked by a standard exclusion list.

Brand suitability goes one step further than brand safety by simply avoiding inappropriate content and purposefully targeting brand-building inventory and maximizing every audience interaction.

When brands align all customer-facing and advertising assets into a consistent and coherent narrative, it builds a positive framework in which customer expectations and customer experiences meet.

What are the consequences of unsafe advertising?

A 2018 study carried out by CHEQ, Magna, and IPG Media Lab demonstrated how consumers’ views of a brand showed a stark decline across key metrics after unsafe ad placement, with a:

• 2.8x decrease in willingness to associate with the brand
• 2x reduction in purchase intent
• 7x loss in brand quality perceptions

Later, in 2019, a separate study revealed consumers generally reject brands that advertise on platforms that host objectionable content, with two-thirds of those surveyed saying they would stop using a brand if its ads appeared next to fake or offensive content.

Such findings are consistent with a more recent survey conducted in 2022 in which 65% of respondents stated that they would likely hold unfavorable views of brands that advertise on privately-owned platforms harboring extremist content such as hate speech, misinformation, and conspiracy theories.

Additionally, over half (51%) of respondents stated that they would hold negative opinions of brands that advertised on platforms with little to no content moderation policies, attitudes that carry over to purchase intent.

Context is king: AI’s downfall

The lack of context in exclusion lists is a major issue for any form of AI.

Let’s take the word “shot” as an example. It could mean a shot of alcohol, a tremendous shot (as a sports reference), or more harmful meanings associated with weapons and crime.

The definition of words depends on the context in which they appear – and it is by accurately identifying this context that brands can bridge the gap between risk and opportunity.

There is no doubt a need for more flexibility, agility, and precise analysis that doesn’t rely on rudimentary, surface-level readings. However, this solution must be able to decipher how terms and phrases relate to one another.

A solution growing in popularity to help decode webpage content is the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence). Yet while this approach can fast-track otherwise time-consuming processes, it can still overzealously block certain sites.

Until these methods are 100% foolproof – which they might never become – it’s worth maintaining a level of human verification to avoid missing out on opportunities, both for brands who lose valuable inventory and publishers who may struggle to monetize topical and newsworthy content.

Detailed metadata embedded into images can provide trustworthy context and further drive AI accuracy. This data can include a wide range of information, such as the location where the image was taken, the date and time it was captured, and details about the camera settings used to take the photo.

By making use of such information, advertisers and publishers can help establish better accuracy with AI-based content analysis.

Key considerations when developing advertising campaigns

The optimal approach to brand safety remains nuanced, so it’s worth noting some of the prevalent uncomfortable truths that characterize the ambiguity of the topic.

Programmatic advertising might be quick but it carries more risk

Algorithmic software has sped up the buying and selling of digital advertising placements, which means buyers cannot predict where ads will appear with complete certainty. However, considerable progress has been made here.

A study conducted in 2022 by Integral Ad Science has shown that 14% of US digital media professionals surveyed consider programmatic advertising to be vulnerable to brand risk incidents – a stark contrast to the 53% of respondents that shared the same views the year before.

To feel confident with programmatic buying, there needs to be complete transparency between brands, agencies, publishers, and technology vendors, as well as a thorough understanding of the technologies used, their capabilities, and their limitations.

Controversy sells

Unfortunately, most of society is guilty of being drawn to controversial topics, and this is a reality that brands must consider and weigh up. Creating extensive exclusion lists may do more harm than good if it comes at the cost of visibility, scale, and reach.

High demand for safe sites will also drive up the price of the known, legacy media sites. This is why ensuring the support of lesser-known minority media publishers, and a considered, nuanced approach to brand safety is important, supporting fresh perspectives and increasing reach.

Change is constant

Information can be published and disseminated very quickly online – about as rapidly as this same information can be refuted and identified as fake. Public opinion is constantly shifting, sped up by 24-hour news cycles that continuously bring new events and developments to light.

While the adage says there’s no such thing as bad publicity, going viral for your advertisements isn’t always a good thing. Whatever strategies and solutions brands use need to be constantly monitored and ready to adapt, alongside a stable set of values and principles that they stand by to avoid being seen as capricious.

Flawless ad safety is a myth

Try as everyone might, there is a good chance that there will be a misstep along the way. It’s human to misinterpret something or for something to slip through the cracks. Having a response strategy in place for when mistakes occur is crucial.

Mistakes will happen: how to best prepare for crisis situations

Unfortunately, even the most preventable crisis can feel random when it strikes. An efficient response strategy will involve outlining detailed guidelines that enable teams to work quickly and efficiently as they address stakeholder concerns.

Brands need a carefully curated approach with enough space to pivot in response to unfolding events. And since no two companies are the same, there is no one-size-fits-all response strategy.

A “Revisit, Reset, Repeat” mentality is key; by examining the tools available, resetting for current and ongoing events, and repeating as the news cycle evolves, guidelines can be constantly assessed and optimized.

In the event of a crisis, people will likely turn to social pages for updates on how a company is responding, so guidelines on sharing public apologies are also vital. These can be informed by social listening to brand health topics to enable the constant monitoring of online discourse around the business.

But as response strategies vary across companies, so do individual social media platform features, each containing its own set of rules that require different approaches to maintaining company values.

For example, Meta offers its own brand safety controls that work across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Twitter, meanwhile, provides technical and general advice, with various content-moderation features specific to the platform – although many advertisers have paused their ad spend in recent times.

On the other hand, TikTok has made great improvements in creating a safe space for brands to advertise through its Brand Safety Center, which provides regularly updated news and recommendations on brand suitability for marketers within the platform.

Why is brand safety important for publishers?

Publishers have slightly different priorities when it comes to building a premium brand-safe environment that other companies want to advertise in.

As owners and producers of content, there is a responsibility for publishers to analyze, understand, and organize this content in a clear way, avoiding misinterpretation, misstatements, or omissions of information – anything that might reduce revenue away by stopping advertisers from displaying ads on their websites.

Several factors, such as domain authority, viewability score, fill rates, and historical bid price, can influence advertisers’ decisions when placing their ads. Blocking invalid traffic, such as bot traffic, is also key to maintaining a high brand safety score.

There’s also the issue of fake news, which has exploded into the digital consciousness and dominated news headlines with no signs of slowing down.

It is therefore in the publishers’ best interest to ensure a safe space for brands to advertise.

Organized chaos or a journey to blissful duality?

Ad placement is effective when it resonates positively with consumers. Unfortunately, when it comes to keeping brand reputation safe in the digital age, it isn’t just about ad content; it’s also about ad association.

Capitalizing on the ever-growing digital landscape is a complex process involving many variable factors. Ensuring brand safety requires careful analysis, not only of the brand itself, but of its messaging, the tools that build it, and the channels that deliver it to audiences.

This analysis includes the process of creating inclusion and exclusion lists for websites based on business objectives. Brands should carefully curate these lists and regularly review them to ensure they are up to date.

Nevertheless, the digital advertising ecosystem is constantly evolving. This makes it difficult for brands to stay on top of the latest trends and threats.

By bringing together different solutions in a custom suite, including contextual targeting which will play a more important role with the demise of the third-party cookie, staying diligent in monitoring ad placements and being prepared to evolve such strategies as the digital landscape continues to change.

Every element of a company’s existence and its interactions in the digital space informs consumers of its values, whether intentional or not – and this reality is more harmful when ignored.