Talking About the Big Issues: Brand Safety

Throughout July, we’ve been taking one of the four biggest issues in mobile advertising right now and examining it close up. To accompany these pieces, weve reached out to some industry experts to give us their perspective on the key issues affecting mobile marketing today.

Following the final article of the series, on brand safety, we asked our experts for their thoughts.M&C Saatchi Mobile PortraitsJames Bott, director of global business development, M&C Saatchi Mobile
Brand safety has and always will be an issue for any advertiser, whether they are placing a print ad or running through RTB. We’ve all seen the unfortunate fast food ad next to the child obesity article in the newspaper, or even the comical positioning of a bus exhaust pipe on the met police campaigns. These errors can happen in a non-automated environment, so the question is: how do we stop these happening digitally?

The good news is that big steps have already been taken to combat these issues, and a number of digital publishers have invested in technology to ensure that ads are placed where they should be. Content crawlers are used to limit the amount of misplacement, and in most cases the ad platform will allow advertisers to self-regulate where their ads are shown. In addition to this, good old frequency capping is used to ensure that consumers aren’t shown the same ad over and over again, which can be just as harming to a brand.

steve chester iabSteve Chester, director of data and industry programmes, IAB UK
In a recent survey conducted by the IAB, respondents were asked to the highlight the key drivers and barriers to growth. Despite fraud and viewability both featuring within the top five, brand safety was cited as the top concern, and this priority has been reflected in recent interviews with a variety of top CMOs. But why, given the interest, fervour and columns inches devoted to the former two?

The key reason is of course that brand safety is a PR issue, whereas the other two – while of key importance – are B2B issues. Brand safety is in the public domain, and misplacement against inappropriate or illegal material can be both embarrassing and damaging for a brand.

The Digital Trading Standards Group (DTSG), acting under the auspices of the Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS), developed a set of good practice principles for businesses involved in the trading of digital display to adhere to guidelines to minimise the misplacement of advertising. These principles were published at the end of 2013 and are platform agnostic, covering desktop, mobile and tablet.

To date, 38 companies across the industry including buy-side, sell-side and intermediaries have undertaken independent verification by third party auditors to review their business processes to certify that they meet these guidelines. Of these, three are mobile companies: Millennial Media, Opera Networks and StrikeAd. The DTSG and JICWEBS continue to review and evolve the good practice principles to further reduce the risk of misplacement, and I would strongly encourage any business not currently signed up to approach either group and get involved.

Jon Buss, managing director UK & Northern EMEA, Criteo
Companies investing in advertising campaigns want to do so with the confidence not only that their ads will reach the right audience, but also that they won’t appear alongside content that might jeopardise their reputation by association.

There are a number of ways to provide a brand safe network and instil trust in advertisers – whether through direct publisher deals and manual site vetting, domain blacklists and whitelist options, third-party content verification, or responsive take-down policies.

In addition, verifications such as the JICWEBS DTSG Good Practice Principles, by independent industry auditor ABC, play an important role in supplying the industry with a trusted and robust currency on which media space can be bought and sold.

Assaf Suprasky, EVP of mobile, Matomy
Where your brand’s ad appears within a site’s or app’s overall layout and ad inventory is crucial to not only how it performs but, equally importantly, how consumers perceive your brand.

Complicating matters for mobile advertisers is the reality that the mobile ad marketplace is highly fragmented. Therefore, there are often multiple companies that advertisers must work with in order to get their mobile ad placed. If not managed properly by a strategic marketing partner that can help the advertisers avoid perilous ad misplacements, the multi-party nature of how mobile ads are facilitated has the potential to produce rather unfortunate ad placements.

Working with the right partner is crucial because it provides brands with a broader and more strategic view of the full digital ad landscape. Your marketing partner should be able to tell you, for example, whether a particular website or app has a reputation for running fraudulent traffic or low-performing ad placements. Likewise, your marketing partner should provide you with some semblance of a 24/7 operation so that, if circumstances require your brand to pull a mobile ad in one part of the world due to a tragic event or some other circumstance that may imperil your brand, it can be removed quickly and efficiently at any hour of the day, ensuring your brand dollars aren’t wasted and your brand’s reputation remains intact.

Brands must also be vigilant about how, when and where their mobile ads appear. Proper mobile ad management doesn’t just come down to campaign optimisation and performance. It also requires brands to have strict ad placement protocols to ensure all parties involved – the brand, the marketing partner and the publisher – understand what will be considered a qualified mobile ad placement and what placements won’t be tolerated.

Fiksu Kathy PattisonKathy Pattison, senior vice president of marketing, Fiksu
Increasingly, a large percentage of mobile ads are shifting to programmatic. At Fiksu, nearly all of our ads are bought programmatically, and industry wide, mobile programmatic ad spend is expected to reach nearly $15bn next year.

While some equate programmatic with remnant leftover inventory, that is far from the case. In fact, leading mobile channels including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and AOL all have programmatic access. These leading platforms, all considered very brand safe, make up a significant percentage of the available mobile inventory.

Outside of those platforms, programmatic exchanges allow for whitelisting and blacklisting both in-app and on mobile web, creating a very brand safe environment that ensures ads are never placed anywhere that’s considered undesirable by a given brand. Given this, brands can confidently spend on mobile knowing their message will be delivered to their desired audience via a desirable placement.

Stephen Jenkins, VP global marketing & communications, Millennial Media
All of the issues that have been discussed in this series – ad fraud, viewability, and now brand safety – are all focused on ensuring that the right, real person views an ad within appropriate content. For brands this means no bot fraud, the ad is in-view and the site or page where the ad was delivered was brand appropriate. This must be the mission of every player in the digital advertising ecosystem.

Brand safety is more subjective than the other topics that have been addressed and what is considered brand safe varies and for each brand. However, it remains critical regardless of how you buy your media, and that includes programmatic.

On the Millennial Media Exchange, we provide transparent inventory to ensure visibility and a well-lit environment for advertisers. Page- and view-level contextual data enables brands to target or negatively target ad placements to avoid negative association with surrounding content that they deem inappropriate for their brand.