By definition, brand safety is the set of measures put in place to protect a brand’s reputation due to potentially harmful influence or undesirable content.
What creates a great brand safety in advertising and publishing experience? Well, we all have a good idea of what doesn’t, like a brand’s ads appearing alongside questionable or inflammatory content. That’s why brand safety is challenging on social media platforms: advertisers have zero transparency into the user generated content that can appear alongside their ad.
On a publisher’s website, things look a little different. With the right tools in place, publishers have the opportunity to create a brand safe environment where their users are engaged in healthy conversations: right in their community. Within these brand safe environments where higher quality interactions are happening, advertisers can drive higher ROI than they would within a social media platform.
Both advertisers and publishers can reap the benefits of a brand safe advertising experience, including a positive reputation, consumer trust, and optimal results. Here are the building blocks that lead to brand safety and an elevated user experience.
Best-in-class moderation tools
Advertising within conversations where users are the most engaged—especially outside of the walled garden platforms—is a powerful way for brands to connect with their consumers and create a brand safety in advertising experience. That’s why moderation that guarantees brand safe user-generated content is a necessity. Multiple layers of moderation are required for UGC—trusted API assessments, proprietary AI/ML algorithms, and human review ensures that ads appear in a safe environment.
Transparency into ad placement
Ad adjacency issues have long been a challenge in creating a brand safety in advertising experience. Brands need to know their ads will appear in suitable environments while driving exposure to relevant and receptive audiences—and have the choice to advertise within or separated from UGC.
Transparency around ad placement—including the choice to advertise on premium real estate within or separated from UGC—is a must-have.
At the page-level, brands need the ability to avoid specific categories and URLs proactively. For example, a children’s clothing store wouldn’t want their ads to appear on a gambling website. Multiple layers of protection, including third-party verification and customizable safety guidelines, are essential.
Targeted, relevant ad experience
Not only is it important for brands to avoid inappropriate content, brands need a way to identify the right environments for ad placements. Every brand is different, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to ad targeting. Brand suitability ensures that ads appear in the right places, in front of the right people.
For instance, contextual targeting displays ads to consumers based on content they are already interested in, so brands see more value—and can drive higher ROI—since they are in front of the right audience.
At OpenWeb, we’ve developed a proprietary conversation quality scoring methodology to ensure the efficacy of moderation on a publisher’s website. We allow advertisers to filter conversations within their ad targeting that do not meet the quality standards of a premium publisher—ensuring more control around UGC.
Using a data-driven audience segmentation and leveraging first-party data is key in creating these relevant experiences. See how brands can use OpenWeb’s addressable audience targeting to drive results.
A positive, brand-safe advertising experience rewards both publishers and advertisers
60% of ad industry professionals see brand safety as a serious concern. It’s a necessity for not only driving results, but also for strengthening the connections that advertisers and publishers have with their audience.
So what’s next? It’s important for advertisers to have a streamlined solution to start taking advantage of UGC within brand safe environments—without compromising scale and reach. With OpenWeb, advertisers have the opportunity to drive higher conversions by accessing receptive audiences while they are enjoying quality interactions.
OpenWeb’s partnership with Centro, the industry-leading demand-side platform, gives advertisers access to a marketplace with 2.7 billion monthly page views across 1,000 top-tier publishers—all using targeted ad experiences within high quality environments.
To learn more about the OpenWeb and Centro partnership, read the press release.
