Brand safety—10 ways for marketers to move beyond the basics

At the Brand Safety Summit in London in May, I posed a challenge to the experts: How do we flip our perspective on brand safety from that of a challenge to a positive opportunity for brands and the digital ecosystem? Media budgets are first and foremost investments in growing brands and driving sales. But they also end up being an investment in the media owners and platforms we choose. If we fund diverse voices, high-quality entertainment, investigative journalism and positive advertising environments, these investments will flourish. If we allow our advertising to appear in cheap made-for-advertising environments or around hate speech and misinformation—or simply opt out of news and diversity—that will be the shape of the media landscape within five years. The reason many companies started to think about “brand safety” in the first place was because of extreme examples where people were called out for accidentally funding extremists or appearing alongside hugely inappropriate content. This led to a rapid rollout of new policies and brand safety verification tags, which play their part but give many advertisers a slightly false sense of security. Avoiding front-page scandal is something that keeps media leaders up at night, but the real opportunity is in adopting a far more nuanced approach. It’s not about blocking everything out of an abundance of caution; it’s about taking the right approach to different spaces that allows your brand to play into the best inventory out there. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs We care about this in TV and other media environments and the internet should be no different. Putting the effort into landing your brand in these spaces not only pays off in the short term but also guarantees a positive media ecosystem for us all in the long term. Almost every advertiser today has a brand safety policy of some sort, and many will have approaches that optimize attention and other quality signals. That’s just the starting point. Here are 10 even more progressive steps you can take: Make this someone’s job This matters. If you cannot afford to have someone dedicated to brand safety and media quality, then at least make it a sizeable responsibility for someone on your team and give them meaningful powers to enforce needed actions. I did this role for Diageo five years ago, and industry leaders continue to show how critical it is. Get into the weeds of campaign setup A great brand safety policy is lovely on paper, but it means nothing if you aren’t crystal clear on exactly what that means in practice. The vast majority of modern media decisions take place within campaign setup of various tech platforms. Be especially careful of “extension” products in search and social that can push your ads into entirely different environments at the flick of a switch. Plan for human error Even the clearest guidance is only as good as the people enacting it. Busy in-house teams and agencies working across multiple clients will sometimes make mistakes. Some of these can be minimized by playing with the master or default setting for an account, but it still needs a constant audit. Tools such as the Adfidence campaign setup governance platform can help. Cut off the long tail Ask your agency or buying team for a site list from a recent campaign. No self-respecting brand needs to appear on 20,000 or 30,000 websites. The biggest risks to brand safety are minimized outside the long tail; then you’re just dealing with suitability. Move toward inclusion lists The biggest advertisers are already ahead of you here and enjoying the dividends. Any approach that starts with an assumption you’re willing to appear anywhere and then tries to block bad places is fraught from the start. Whether you build an exclusive partnership list, adopt an agency’s or partner’s, or take a public list such as Comscore’s website ranking, moving toward inclusion makes your media safer and higher quality. Apply different settings to different environments Stringent brand safety settings often represent a huge distortion between brand safety and suitability. If you’re advertising in high-quality and trusted media environments, stringent block lists only limit your reach and defund meaningful journalism. Use keywords to protect brand-specific suitability but ease up on other settings in trusted spaces. Ad Age Small Agency Conference & Awards Join us July 23 & 24 in Boston Learn more here Embrace do-not-block lists Overzealous brand safety keyword lists can defund positive journalism and diverse voices. Many agencies or diversity partners can provide simple do-not-block lists. If your keyword list is thousands long and almost impossible to read through and maintain, then shorten it. Do not block the news Completely backing out of the news category robs your brand of premium eyeballs and defunds quality journalism. Evidence shows consumers don’t see a negative adjacency between news articles and surrounding adverts. Services such as Ad Fontes Media can give you a nuanced approach to avoiding extremes and controversy. Plan for inclusion in your media plans too Marketers have become better at representing and talking to a diverse set of consumers, but we don’t always bring that thinking through to our media plans. Lean into diverse publications and creators. Partner directly with them or build networks of multiple titles as special inclusion lists. Make intentional media investments Programmatic media’s promise often reduces the “right place” to “anywhere cheap.” Direct partnerships sidestep many brand safety issues and can offer 5x the value. When playing in the programmatic space, make careful and well-managed decisions. Your brands today, and the internet of the future, will thank you. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Brand safety—10 ways for marketers to move beyond the basics

Featured Stories