There's a race among social media apps to be the first to offer brands guarantees that ads are showing up in appropriate settings, not amid controversial videos on TikTok or objectionable Facebook posts. In this “brand safety” contest, the Chinese-owned TikTok has been particularly aggressive trying to satisfy marketers.

TikTok was the first social media app to introduce third-party verification for an “in-feed” brand safety program. Last year, TikTok partnered with ad tech company OpenSlate (now owned by DoubleVerify) to vet the order of the placement of ads on the “For You” page, which is the main video stream personalized to TikTok’s 1 billion-plus users. In September, TikTok struck a deal with Integral Ad Science, another independent ad viewability firm, to also screen videos for brands.

Then last week, Facebook jumped into the fray, promising to partner with third parties to vouch for its new brand safety program, which includes advertising controls in News Feed. Also, Facebook, now operating under the corporate name Meta, said it would offer similar brand suitability tools inside Instagram.

These efforts are indicative of the challenges within social media, where brands are worried about being portrayed in a bad light. There has been unprecedented movement from the industry to establish a safety net within things like TikTok’s “For You” pages to Twitter’s timeline and Facebook’s feeds.

Marketers are starting to see how all the platforms will improve suitability controls, and how those controls could affect ad campaigns. In some cases, suitability standards make it harder to advertise, because they limit the available pool of ad inventory. The more topics a brand wants to avoid on TikTok, the fewer people the brand could reach. The dynamics also mess with the pricing of ads, as Mondeléz found out this summer when it tested Facebook's News Feed controls, which increased the cost of ads by about 15%. 

Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of Integral Ad Science, has been working with TikTok on brand safety, which she said works by classifying "video, audio and text, frame by frame.”

Integral Ad Science, or IAS, represents dozens of advertisers that have been testing controls on TikTok, Utzschneider said, including automotive, fast food, clothing, and food and beverage brands. “We are very confident that advertisers that are running [our] product, are running in brand safe environments,” Utzschneider said.

Billion served

In September, TikTok announced it surpassed 1 billion active users, which puts the app closer to Facebook in terms of sheer size and popularity. Meta’s family of apps, which includes Facebook and Instagram, reaches 3.6 billion monthly users. A new report by analytics firm App Annie said that the average U.S. TikTok user spends more time with the app every month than the average Facebook user spends in that app.

TikTok, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has become a viral powerhouse among brands like Heinz, Barilla, KFC, McDonald’s, Colgate, Maybelline, Pepsi and others.

TikTok points to HP, the computer maker, as an example of an advertiser that recently used OpenSlate to help manage suitability settings for an in-feed ad campaign. A case study of the campaign on TikTok’s website claimed HP verified that 99.5% of the impressions would be considered brand safe.

DoubleVerify purchased OpenSlate earlier this month for $150 million. IAS and DoubleVerify both measure viewability and brand safety controls, among other digital ad auditing services. IAS works with Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Disney, Mars, Samsung, Sanofi, American Express, Bayer, LVMH and Adidas.

TikTok is a challenging environment for advertisers, partly because of its young user base. The app is mostly known for popularizing dances, lip sync parodies, video mashups, hashtag challenges and music. But TikTok has run into similar criticism as Instagram in terms of its effect on its youngest audiences. Teens can run into imagery that glorifies eating disorders or depicts drug use, for example.

Related: 5 ways TikTok is shaping the future of entertainment 

Mistrust and verify

The rush to bring in third parties to verify brand safety is essentially borne out of mistrust. Brands no longer take platforms’ word that they are clean, and they want independent arbiters. No setting has been more complicated to moderate than within “feed” environments like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter’s timeline and TikTok’s “For You” page. These are all algorithmically controlled channels, serving personalized streams of content to tens of millions and billions of users, depending on the app.

“This all feels like a must-have at this point, particularly as more and more ‘social’ investment is being pushed into TikTok,” said Ellie Bamford, senior VP and global head of media and connections at ad agency R/GA. “We have demanded, and rightly so, a massive shift in brand safety and responsibility from Facebook over the past two years. TikTok should be held to the same standards, particularly when adults in the U.S. are spending more time there every day than on Facebook.”

Facebook has taken the lion’s share of criticism for its apps’ effects on the internet and society at large. Facebook recently came under fire from whistleblower Frances Haugen, an ex-employee who leaked documents from the company. There were internal studies that showed Facebook knew about potentially harmful effects that Instagram had on some teens’ self-esteem. Last week, a group of states attorneys general, including from New York, California and Texas, said they were investigating Meta over how social media apps impact teens.

At the same time, Facebook redoubled its efforts on the brand safety front, expanding what it calls “topic exclusions” in News Feed, which reaches 2.9 billion people a month. On Thursday, Facebook announced that it would also bring brand suitability settings to Instagram, which had not been in place in the early model of the platform.

Last week, Meta also said it would send out a request for proposals to bring in third-party partners. “It would be incredibly beneficial to the broader digital ecosystem if Facebook opens up their live News Feed,” IAS’ Utzschneider said.

Meanwhile, Twitter has also promised “adjacency” controls and third-party verification within its tumultuous timeline.

Brand filters

Rob Pearsall, managing director, social activation, Omnicom Media Group, leads the agency’s brand safety program called the Council on Accountable Social Advertising. CASA is one of several groups that have popped up in the ad world to work with industry trade organizations like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and the platforms to establish “brand suitability” standards when it comes to topics like hate speech and disinformation, among other core areas.

“We were very pleased with two updates from TikTok in our most recent round of CASA updates that address adjacency controls,” Pearsall said. TikTok installed “inventory filters” so brands can set the level of risk they are open to taking within its feed and manage where ads show up. Pearsall said Omnicom expects that service will eventually be baked into the self-serve TikTok ad platform for all advertisers. Pearsall also noted that Omnicom can get third-party verification from Zefr, another viewability firm.

“This has made TikTok the first social platform, outside of YouTube, to deliver a product for … adjacency verification,” Pearsall said.

Jack Smith, chief product officer at DoubleVerify, said that the firm is working with Twitter to figure out how to implement brand “suitability” standards there. It’s a complex problem, and any work like this requires the platforms to share data about their dynamic feeds, Smith said. The auditors need to understand the context of the ads and the content adjacent to the ads. They also need to assess viewability: Was the ad on the screen at the same time as an objectionable post?

“We want to understand what content to evaluate,” Smith said. “That has to do with how much content is adjacent to the ad itself and each ad environment is unique.”

R/GA’s Bamford said that the agency’s clients have been working with IAS brand safety tools on TikTok. “During campaigns, TikTok serves ads adjacent to the verified brand-safe videos,” Bamford said. “Videos are refreshed and analyzed by IAS multiple times a week, and we receive weekly campaign reporting with insights into ad placement.”

There can be downsides when brands are sticklers about suitability, though. “Reach, really that’s the only downside," Bamford said. "Brands and agencies have been touting massive billions view numbers on TikTok paid campaigns over the past few years. Once you put these protections in place you will see a drop in those inflated metrics.”