Protecting the image of the brand is the supreme goal while advertising. But, certain risks can cause ads to be displayed next to hazardous web content. Avoiding which is of utmost priority. Slide through the carousel to know the 3 main risks to avoid to ensure brand safety.
While advertising, the purpose is clear: the brand must be protected at all costs! However, the question is, how?
The numerous targeting approaches utilized by companies across multiple platforms (YouTube, Social, and OpenWeb) focus on either exploiting their data or keeping brands entirely unaware of where their advertisements are being put. What is the explanation behind this? The expansion of programmatic advertising and the reliance on behavioral targeting.
This has put brands at risk. How can you ensure that ad messages do not display next to hazardous web content? How can brands and their customers be protected?
Moreover, when a company produces an exceptional product or service, it develops an identity and achieves a ‘brand’ status.
A brand becomes the worldwide image of a company and defines how people view it. As a result, protecting brand image is one of the pillars of marketing and advertising tactics.
According to a November 2021 study performed in the United States, almost 80% of respondents strongly or somewhat agreed that marketers should be concerned about their advertising showing next to unpleasant material on a website or app.
In March, Applebee’s dancing cowboy commercial disrupted CNN’s Ukraine conflict story, causing a stir and causing the business to be mocked on social media.
As a result, the brand removed all of its advertisements, and CNN overhauled its ad placements against news. This is only one of many firms that have been subjected to advertising that contains dangerous or unpleasant material.
Brand safety is a crucial emphasis area for advertisers nowadays. It refers to the steps done by brands to safeguard their reputation and avoid appearing in any bad situation.
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) also developed GARM: Brand Safety Floor + Suitability Framework to assist companies in protecting their reputation by avoiding damaging or unsuitable material.
What is Brand Safety?
According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, “brand safety” is “keeping a brand’s reputation secure while they post their advertisements online” (IAB). Simply, brand safety is the act of ensuring that advertising material does not appear next to any potentially harmful content.
As a result, there is less possibility of ad misplacement, and a brand’s reputation is not hurt. In addition, support for infringing material and services is being phased out. But it’s far more intricate than it appears.
The IAB has established benchmarks to assist marketers in avoiding harmful material and implementing brand safety procedures.
Depending on the image they’ve created, different businesses have varying rules regarding where they want to promote (or are developing). For example, Apple has such tight control over its brand image that it does not allow bad actors on the screen to utilize its products.
Risks to Brand Safety
In today’s digital-first society, three elements represent the greatest risk to brand safety:
Social media frenzy
Social media has evolved as a global source of truth throughout the years. Building a brand identity requires an active and well-thought-out social media presence. People like staying informed and carefully following their favorite companies on social media. As is typically the case, social media is both a blessing and a curse.
While it is a terrific place for companies to promote and communicate with customers and brand fans, it can also be terrible for brands if advertisements are presented with undesirable content. It is a strong and simply accessible tool.
There have been occasions where netizens have called out businesses for bad content, graphics, and placement choices, in addition to problematic or offensive material and pages.
To ensure brand safety, everything from ad strategy and placements to tracking mentions, comments, and appearance is critical. Marketers must also be wary of imposters and identity thieves, who may harm a brand’s reputation by engaging in fraudulent activities or uploading undesirable information.
Being a Victim of Ad Fraud
A business worth over $640 billion, like many others, has its fair share of fraudulent operations. There are questionable websites that use bots to create fraudulent clicks and attract advertisers. Advertisers lose billions of dollars each month to ad fraud due to a lack of in-depth research and reliance on low-cost inventory. Marketers must determine if their advertising are reaching their intended target demographic, obtain control over ad impressions, and assess the quality of impressions and clicks.
However, how does this impact brand safety?
Adult websites are a significant source of ad fraud. The depiction of an ad by a well-known company alongside pornographic material can have a significant impact on the brand’s image. While keyword block lists are an effective and much-needed technique, they cannot guarantee brand safety on their own. Keyword blocking may also backfire. News publications are a frequent target for criticism. In order to avoid false or sensitive news, companies forgo the possibility to display their advertisements on premium, popular, high-traffic news channels.
Ad placement strategy is being ignored
A common error made by marketers and advertisers is failing to prioritize ad placement. Youtube has come under fire when claims surfaced that it was showing recognized brand advertisements alongside disinformation and conspiracy content.
If it hasn’t already been said, ad placements are important and have a huge influence on a brand’s image. Poorly placed advertising next to risky or bad material may have severe effects for businesses, and marketers are more aware of the need to control where their brand is positioned.
With advertisements and content always going hand in hand, focusing on ad placement to guarantee brand safety will remain critical. Advertisers must constantly prioritize ad placement and ensure that the material adjacent to it is consistent with the brand’s values and messaging.
Developing an advertising approach that is effective for both sales and safety
The requirement to emphasize brand safety has consequences, including a considerable drop in audience reach, the inability to target hyper-specific audience pools, and the difficulty to do justice to allotted ad budgets. However, this is only applicable to marketers and advertisers that are still using traditional ad tactics and procedures.
The 2020s will be all about being contextual – the era of contextual advertising. This automated advertising technique makes use of cutting-edge technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to display commercials with high brand safety ratings. Ad copy must also be consistent with the current information on the page to ensure brand safety. Contextual advertising are therefore required for both publishers and advertisers to ensure brand protection.
How can contextual advertising provide maximum brand safety?
Contextual advertising guarantees advertisements are presented on relevant websites that target the appropriate audiences in an environment that is secure and fits with the brand’s identity and values by assessing written and visual content, as well as the context of web pages, without the use of cookies. Contextual AI focuses on putting adverts on editorial pages, which are seen to be the most brand-safe setting for marketers. Contextual AI, in addition to conventional keyword analysis, enables marketers and publishers to optimize prospects through complete data. Contextual advertising opens up new opportunities for companies by utilizing skills such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Sentiment analysis.
What factors contribute to contextual advertising being the future of digital advertising?
- Concentrate on precision and relevance.
- Allows for very detailed ad delivery and personalisation to reach specific audience groups.
- Intelligent targeting solutions that go above and beyond the normal IAB taxonomy, reducing impression waste
- A low-cost solution that may be adjusted to unique company segments and overcome advertising obstacles.
- Most crucially, a solution that does not rely on cookies.
Contextual advertising is a privacy-first solution that does not rely on third-party data. Its capacity to study a web page with a human-like comprehension of content and context makes it an excellent brand-safe advertising approach.
