Brand-Safety-programmatic

Table Of Contents:

Consider this scenario, you want to promote your brand on the Internet. But, how comfortable would you be showing your ads alongside news about riots, terrorist attacks, and covid deaths? 

In an ideal world, nobody want’s to harm their brand reputation which takes years to build.

I know we all can agree on above statements,

But shouldn’t we taking measures to product our Brands reputation online ?

If yes, how can we do that ?

This is where Brand Safety programmatic features comes in. 

The demand for Brand safety features got popular after it was observed many Advertiser have reduced their spend or advertising as they were worried about their brand reputation.

So, does Brand Safety solve only ads appearing on irrelevant sites ?

The answer is NO!

What other ways Brand safety programmatic feature helps ?

Here are some of them:

Does brand safety only helps Advertiser ? 

Again, the answer is NO!

Both Advertiser and Publisher can benefit from it. 

How Brand Safety can help both Publisher and Advertiser ?

Publishers Brand Safety Importance

Publishers can take below steps to establish Advertiser trust in them.  

Make sure you have good domain authority, a good fill rate(ad request received vs served), viewability score(what percent of ad was shown to the users 60%, 70% etc) and more.

Additonally below pointers should be kept in mind: 

Take steps to reduce Bot Traffic as these information are available to other advertisers as well. Quite frankly, everybody wants to show their ads to real users and not some bot.

If you are partnering with DSP’s or ad networks, make sure to choose only those who have features in place to prevent bot traffic, ad injection etc.

If you’re willing to spend some money, I would recommend partnering with 3rd party brand safety tools and over come above drawbacks.  

How Can Brand Safety Help Advertisers: 

In the same way Publishers take advantage of Brand Safety programmatic features, even Adverisers can take advantage of this. Let’s see below: 

Choose DSP, which have Brand Safety features inbuilt in them. My favourite one are TTD, DV360 etc. 

Chose 3rd party brand safety tools. It would increase your media planning cost, but it’s worth it. Some of the recommended 3rd party brand safety tools are doubleverfiy, IAS and more. 

Avoid showing your ads in the following categories or topics: 

But again, one size does not fit all.

As an Advertiser, you have to understand which sites to show your ads. For instance, if you have an app to promote, such as PUBG or Counter strike, blocking sites such as downloading and sharing, and gambling would not be ideal.

In Broader terms, below are categories or topics you can exclude from appearing in your ads when creating Campaigns. This is from DV360, but more or less it covers the majority of DSP’s. You can decide which to exclude based on your preferences. 

  • Sexual: Prevents your ads from appearing on your site on adult content sites, including text, videos, or images.
  • Derogatory: Site biased against individuals, groups, or organizations based on criteria such as race, religion, disability, sex, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or political affiliation. 
  • Downloads & sharing: Any sites related to downloading.
  • Weapons: Any sites that have content related to personal weapons, including guns, knives, ammunition or small firearms. 
  • Gambling: Sites with topics related to betting or wagering in a real-world or online setting.
  • Violence: Content which may be considered graphically violent, gory, gruesome, or shocking, such as street fighting videos, accident photos, descriptions of torture, etc.
  • Suggestive: Adult content, as well as suggestive content that’s not explicitly explicitly sexual content. This category includes all pages categorized as adult.
  • Suggestive: Words considered disrespectful, such as curse words and sexual slang, are used frequently. Words that are only used very occasionally, such as those used in quotations on news sites, are not included.
  • Alcohol: Provides information about alcoholic beverages, brands and recipes.
  • Drugs: Contains content related to the recreational use of legal or illegal drugs, as well as to drug paraphernalia or cultivation.
  • Tobacco: Contains content related to tobacco and tobacco accessories, including lighters, humidors, ashtrays, etc.
  • Politics: Political news and media, including discussions of social, governmental, and public policy.
  • Religion: Content related to religious thought or beliefs.
  • Tragedy: Content related to death, disasters, accidents, war, etc.
  • Transportation accidents: Content related to motor vehicle, aviation or other transportation accidents.
  • Shocking: Content which may be considered shocking or disturbing, such as violent news stories, stunts, or toilet humor.
  • Sensitive social issues: Topics evoking strong, opposing views and sparking debates are termed sensitive social issues. The issue of abortion falls into this category, as does immigration reform in the United States, an issue that is controversial in many countries and markets (such as abortion).

Ok now that we know what Brand Safety is and how it can help. There are still a few questions left unanswered. We will look at them below:

Who decides what is safe and what’s not?

There are guidelines outlined by organizations like IAB and MRC, which are standard for Brand safety. But, many times those are not sufficient. As a publisher or advertiser, it’s important for you to ensurebrand safety by implementing your own measures

Many already do this, which is great. However, it’s worth noting that brand safety can be subjective and vary between different publishers and advertisers. 

If everything is good Brand Safety, then where is the problem?

Well, read the story below to understand.

An advertiser had kept the word killed as a blacklisted keyword for it’s brand safety mesusres but many news sites publish stories about Laws related to killing animals. But since you have marked killed as a blacklisted keyword, your ad won’t appear on that page. Even though that page talks about laws protecting animals, killing them would invite a penalty.  

So brand safety can be very subjective since, as an Advertiser or Publisher, you will have to decide what is right and what is wrong for your site. 

From the above example, we can conclude both Advertiser and Publisher missed an opportunity to show their ads just because of one misunderstood keyword.

Are there any other topic to explore?

This topic is vast, but there are few additional pieces of information that can help, such as below:

What is the Difference between Brand Safety Programmatic and Brand Stability?

Brand safety can be an umbrella word under which brand suitability can be defined. 

Brand Safety is about taking measures to make your Brand saferand  establish brand reputation online. While brand suitability is carefully selecting websites, keywords or tools to make sure your brand appear in right place. This can help miss out on misunderstood keywords or content as explained above.