Who doesn’t want brand safety? There are so many examples of brands turning up where they shouldn’t, or acquiring unsavoury associations, that marketers are understandably keen to preserve brand safety, and it’s typically revealed as their number one priority in studies.
However, it seems that actions don’t speak as loudly as words, with only half having measures in place to address brand safety properly.
Cost is an issue, claims Terry Hornsby, Group Digital & Innovation Director at Reach PLC & EVP Mantis, talking on the Brand Safety panel at NDA’s recent Foresight conference. “Small advertisers have to spend half their marketing budgets blocking advertising because of the technologies they’re using. It’s not necessarily that they don’t want to do [brand safety], they can’t afford to do it.”
In fairness, brand safety is a lot easier said than done. There is no consistent legislation, points out Richard Bettinson, Senior Director Media & Insight, Hilton
“Where you put the onus on owning brand safety is a difficult thing.” Nick Hill, Head of Programmatic EMEA for EssenceMediacom adds that tools claiming to handle everything for marketers “can definitely result in worse brand safety for people who aren’t thinking about it.”
“The search for cheap scale and clicks doesn’t help at all. From a publisher point of view, it’s very frustrating,” states Cath Waller, MD Advertising at Immediate.
Part of the problem is the constant state of flux in digital advertising. The cookie hokey cokey is just one example of never-ending change and uncertainty. “Are you going to invest in brand safety tools and technology when it may change down the line,” Bettinson suggests.
“Knowing where your ads are placed and having supply lines that are verified all the way through, that transparency is the place we want to be,” Hill insists.
Transparency is all well and good, but context and nuance are where tools still struggle. “Clunky” is how Waller refers to them. Understandably, some news sites could be deemed brand ‘unsafe’ given the content, but there are other places where tools could be triggered but where the brand isn’t unsafe at all. “BBC History is teaching the young and old about the mistakes of the past and how we create a better future. We talk a lot about swords and war. It’s one of our smaller websites and it needs ads.” The right use of AI, she suggests, could help publishers get the right brand safety measures in place “and allow us to open up masses more inventory”.
There has to be an evolution, panellists suggest, to talking about sentiment and context rather than keywords. Relativity also plays a huge role. “If I was in the room with my marketing colleagues, we probably couldn’t agree on what was safe and not safe,” Bettinson suggests.
The struggle is marrying efficiency and the use of technology, with matching ad placements to each individual’s appetite for risk, or definition of safe. “Brands will make different determinations on what they do and don’t want to appear next to. I don’t think anyone wants to have a massive keyword exclusion list,” explains Hill, adding that an evolution in this space is long overdue, with little having changed over the last decade – “we could probably be shooting for something better”.
Striking a balance between high performing content and brand safety is not as simple as talking about sacrificing reputation or brand sentiment for broad exposure. Made for advertising (MFA) sites tend to be a turn off for many, but some legitimate content sites have a similar appearance. “We’ve had people talk to us about their sites being flagged [as MFA] because they’ve got recommendation engines with other content or ads on them. We’re talking to publishers and working with them on how we define that for agencies and advertisers,” Hornsby explains.
The difficulties of tailoring editorial to advertising possibilities are endless, not least editorial independence. In some cases, the mechanisms of brand safety can lead to absurdity. Take Immediate’s food content, for example. “It’s quite hard to replace ‘chicken breast’ in a recipe,” Waller admits. “That’s the craziness of it. A lot of publishers suffer. If, as an industry, we can move away completely from keyword blocking then that will free up swathes of quality inventory for advertisers to benefit.”
Ultimately, consensus and regulation would help a more sensible approach to brand safety all round. “For brand suitability, I’m not sure you can measure it, it’s so brand specific. It’s built into supply strategy and inclusion lists,” Hill remarks, noting that this still eliminates a lot of suitable content. “We can make any regulation work in the UK but you’d want it to be built more into the infrastructure of adtech.
“We’ve got a job to do as an industry to get a framework that can be used for every client because we do it on a case-by-case basis. That’s quite a challenge. We need to do it at scale,” Hornsby warns. “I don’t mind if legislation is written with intelligence behind it but that doesn’t happen all the time. We need to help [government] understand a bit more. Bettinson agrees: “There does need to be, not intervention but [government] support to push this.”
This will be a challenge, Waller points out, because she feels the government lacks a certain understanding of the nuances within the ad industry. Referring to the HFSS legislation, aimed at cutting out unhealthy food advertising, it also encompasses avocados and olive oil and doesn’t apply to all types of advertising. “Everyone has to get involved, get behind the gold standard because otherwise, we could end up with having no input or proper consultation into the future of our own industry.”
Ultimately, the panellists are looking for a return to quality. Verifiable content, produced by humans, premium publishing that delivers better results for advertisers. “Attribution modelling is showing better quality content, drawing better results. As you move away from click-based and outdated metrics, you’re seeing a shift in a positive way,” Bettinson insists.
