Brand safety is a set of measures that aims to protect the image and reputation of brands from the negative or damaging influence of questionable or inappropriate content when advertising online. The premise of “brand safety” technologies is to help advertisers avoid placing ads on pages that are not compatible with their image or the intended use of their product or service. As a marketing professional, your clients rely on you to advise them in best practices and keep them away from damaging their brand. This is why you need to offer your clients safe content placement.

The 614 Group offered topline perceptions from their recent study on brand safety. The study shows that affluent U.S. consumers were more sensitive to a brands’ appearance adjacent to content and, as a result, were certainly less likely to purchase from a company whose brand appears next to content that makes them uncomfortable. 53.6% of senior managers, and consumers with household incomes of $80,000 or more, were somewhat or extremely likely to decide on a product based on where their ads appeared.

This is why your clients need safe content placement

While brand safety is a big piece of the marketing puzzle, it’s important to remember that it isn’t the only component. Issues related to viewability and invalid traffic can hinder performance, and, more broadly, diminish trust and transparency across the industry. Beyond ad verification, marketers also need to determine if their ads are actually reaching the intended audience. As programmatic platforms come into wider use, reaching the right audience in viewable, brand-​safe contexts remains the primary focus for marketers. This is why your clients need you.

AdMall can help:

• To identify and commit to your client’s story. Determine who your client is as a brand, as well as the expressed company purpose. How does the brand identify? How does the positioning match your client’s product?
• Understand your client’s target customer and “get to know them." Be sure to discover, learn and understand the audience using AudienceSCAN.
• Position your client’s brand story for the right marketing message. Every brand has perceived credibility, symbolism, integrity, and continuity. When building the correct message, be sure to communicate this self-authenticity.
• Determine the right ad formats and content to enhance your client’s brand. Again, AudienceSCAN informs the choices of which ad formats can fulfill your client’s goals.
• Use other tools to help tailor your client’s targeting. The safest way to place ads is to buy directly from good publishers. Think about which publisher sites and content pages will avoid misleading your audience on the company’s brand image. Shy of that, brand safety vendors specialize in contextual targeting and can select the right content on which to place your client’s ad.

As a caveat, please be aware that brand safety technology may not work as well as designers intend. Marketers employ it, thinking it’s enough to keep their brands off the worst parts of the internet but it may not be sufficient to keep ads from showing up on fake news, hate speech and misinformation sites. The bottom line is that advertising placement deserves careful and informed attention. You owe it to your clients to be that advertising professional.