Brand-Safety in Advertising: What Publishers Need to Know
January 2023
Firstly, what is brand safety in advertising and why do we need it? It has always been a challenge for advertisers to control their ad stack, leading to a lot of transparency issues and brand safety concerns.With today’s more advanced algorithms contributing to programmatic advertising, companies are still surprised to see the different places their ads end up online.
By targeting ads to specific audiences, rather than specific locations, it is all too easy for somebody’s ad to accidentally end up playing alongside an illegal or inappropriate video. And with over 60% of U.S. adults considering a brand’s reputation above all else when making purchasing decisions, keeping your brand safe is more important than ever. Instead of allowing your brand to be forever tarnished by a misfortunate ad placement, you can educate yourself about the biggest advantages of brand safety in advertising and avoid a PR crisis.
At Insticator, we integrate the top safety and security features as part of our Full Ad Management platform, offering publishers and advertisers alike the ability to freely push data-enriched ads without worrying about where they’ll end up. Join us as we discuss brand safety in advertising and how you can achieve an ideal level of safety without putting any restrictions on your ad campaign goals.
What is Brand Safety in Advertising, Exactly?
So, what is brand safety in advertising exactly? Brand safety refers to the measures taken to ensure that a brand’s advertising does not appear next to or in association with content that may harm the brand’s reputation or image.
Being a large corporation or LLC may come with its perks, but it also has some major drawbacks in the digital advertising sphere. Major industry players like Amazon and Verizon were the first to exercise new programmatic algorithms. With this we saw that changing the way ads target preferred audiences, resulted in a dramatic landscape shift in favor of fast content at the risk of unwanted association.
Publishers and individual advertisers can utilize included built-in safety and security tools when using an online system. Insticator’s platform is encrypted with top security measures to make sure ads stay exactly where you place them. Additionally, you can ensure that you are buying and selling ad space through a secure channel that will not compromise the integrity of your brand.
By learning the hard way, large companies discovered that brand safety in digital advertising is a key measure in determining how protected they are against offensive or illegal content. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, brand safety can be as simple as avoiding placing one’s ad alongside offensive or inappropriate pieces of content. For advertisers, it also means ensuring that the ad trading space is a secure environment that does not cost publishers their integrity or their reputation.
Why Publishers Should Worry About Brand Safety in Digital Advertising
If it seems like ad security is only something that advertisers should be worrying about, keep reading. Brand safety in advertising is incredibly important for publishers and advertisers alike as the wrong ad placement could result in huge amounts of loss – and an irreparable reputation to boot.
It can sometimes be difficult to discover exactly when your ads have started to be placed next to compromising content, driving down pageviews and causing a dip in revenue that can be harder to earn back after it’s been happening for so long. And while there is growing pressure on marketing and advertising agencies to be stricter on safety standards in digital advertising, it can still be difficult for publishers to take full advantage of monetization opportunities on their own without better security by their side. That’s why it is essential to take proactive steps in protecting your brand and its name across all of your advertising efforts.
Here are some of the most common things publishers avoid or do to provide a brand safe environment:
- – Avoid invalid traffic
- – Avoid blacklisted keywords
- – Create a more transparent supply-chain ecosystem
- – Choose direct deals over programmatic
Protecting Your Brand the Right Way
Protecting the integrity of your ad inventory brand as well as its quality should be prioritized, but not at the expense of losing out on the ability to monetize altogether. A main goal that our Insticator pros try to push with all publishers is to set a solid security plan from the start, so future efforts can be focused on building up overall ROI. Here are some steps you can take to get started:
1. Minimize Bot Traffic
Bots are an unavoidable and inconvenient part of the growing digital advertising sphere, but there are increasingly efficient measures you can take to avoid them as much as possible. Bots immediately send up red flags as far as your website’s security protocols are concerned, because malicious bots imitate internet user behaviors – also known as invalid user activity, disrupting traffic stats and possibly stealing data from webpages. This can really damage your ability to gain more traffic as well. Make sure you are tracking the right metrics that measure bot activity and work with us to establish a security protocol that keeps bots away.
2. Screen Each Ad Network
Selecting the correct ad network is very important as it will act as a medium between publishers and advertisers. Whatever type of advertising and ad management platform you decide to work with, you can review the specifics of it to ensure its digital marketing securities are up to snuff. Review your demand-side platform (DSP) or supply-side platform (SSP) to familiarize yourself with what technology is used to buy and sell ads as well as enforce brand safety in digital advertising across all types of digital networks. Fraud and spoofing prevention can easily be applied to any kind of ad management campaign, freeing up your worries about security so you can focus on the important day-to-day content engagement needs.
3. Partner With Safety Experts
Publishers can get more bang for their advertising buck and reach further than their competitors when they partner with a team of seasoned experts across all types of ad management channels. Insticator consists of a globally distributed team of experts who work to drive up engagement across your side and your advertising locations, create more dynamic ads, and ensure that the ad trading process is smooth and secure.
Whether or not safety is an ultimate priority in your growing advertising needs, our pros can ensure that you will be able to reach your goals as a top performer without compromising any risk to your brand safety in advertising.
Learn More About Brand Safety Today
As the world of digital advertising continues to bring new types of technological challenges to the table, safety is a growing concern – and a budding feature – that more and more publishers are looking to talk about. Here at Insticator, we offer plenty of ways to establish security around your ad campaign to protect your brand against any compromising situations. Hopefully we have provided insight into the question, what is brand safety in advertising, as well as explained why it is so vital to have. Learn more about why you need to prioritize brand safety in advertising and get in touch with us to get started with one of today’s most secure ad publishing platforms.
Interested in learning more? Learn about IAB ALM 2023 and the best supply side platforms from our team of experts.
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