The questions and concerns about Brand Safety have been around since programmatic started scaling up. At its core, Brand safety intends to address a loss of trust between a brand and a consumer. As such, it becomes imperative for brands to ensure optimum brand safety in order to ensure a longer potential lifetime value for the consumer, and help maintain positive perceptions about the brand. The short and long term effects of non-adherence to brand safety are damning- a study by the CMO Council indicated that more than half of customers could step away from a brand if ds pertinent to the brand appeared alongside inappropriate content. With the trifecta of lifetime revenue from a consumer, brand reputation, and consumer perceptions on the line, brand safety and brand suitability strategies need to be carefully evaluated and executed. Advertisers would need to move beyond regular practices pertaining to keyword blocking and domain-level whitelisting or blacklisting, and engage with brand suitability partners to ensure that their inventory is seen in the right places, in the right context. Brand safety has always been a top priority for advertisers, but recent developments, primary among which are the Elon Musk Lawsuit on GARM and the subsequent shutdown of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), have made this issue more complex. The decentralization of brand safety standards has left advertisers in a fragmented space where platform-specific solutions are emerging as the key to protecting brand reputation.With the absence of centralized bodies like GARM, the responsibility now falls heavily on ad tech platforms and advertisers to proactively manage and enforce their own brand safety strategies. Before we do a deeper dive into the nuances of brand safety and brand suitability in a programmatic ecosystem, we would need to understand what brand safety essentially ensues, how it has evolved over the years, what advertisers need to know about Brand Safety, and what the future holds for brand suitability technologies.
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Brand Safety: Definitions and Current Scope
According to IAB, Brand Safety may be defined as the practices and tools that are put in place to ensure that a digital advertising campaign will not appear next to any content that is illegal (e.g. drug related content) or dangerous (e.g. pornography or violence). Brand Safety should be applied to every campaign to protect a brand’s reputation and not fund any illegal or dangerous content providers. On a broader level, brand safety would encompass measures that Adtech players throughout the advertising supply chain leverage to secure a brand/advertiser’s reputation from the harmful effects of objectionable content that could appear next to their advertised content. Brand Suitability adds another dimension to brand safety. On the face of it, Brand Suitability encompasses the maintenance of equitability between reach and protection according to a brand’s own requirements. While brand safety has a larger definition wherein safety would be generic across brands, brand suitability would differ according to brands. As our Head of Product, Anand Kumar, puts it across brilliantly, “Brand Safety has become more about content adjacency, while brand suitability is about contextual adjacency. While brand safety is about protection, brand suitability is about relevance.”. A luxury fashion brand might want its ads to appear alongside content about high-end lifestyle, rather than mass-market retail promotions. In today’s fragmented media environment, simply avoiding harmful content isn’t enough. Brands need to go beyond safety and focus on suitability to ensure their messaging doesn’t just survive, but thrives. This nuanced approach is key to building positive consumer sentiment and driving meaningful engagement.
THE CURRENT STATE OF BRAND SAFETY
Advertisers need to know that their brand safety strategy aligns with the needs of today by ensuring there is no over-blocking of content or that unsafe content isn’t finding a way through. Keyword blocking and domain-level white- and blacklisting often leave holes like this. Keywords can have multiple meanings while URL domains can host content spanning a wide range of subject matter. Both tactics fall short of providing advertisers with adequate protection and scale. The solution is to ensure there is a transparent relationship between the brand safety vendor and the advertiser. Given that programmatic advertising removes direct control of the media buy, the confidence of the brand in their chosen partners is critical for success. For that confidence to be withstanding, the relationship among the brand, agency partner, publishers, and technology vendors must be fluid—as long-term benefits derive from transparency and evidence-based decisions.
The Decentralization of Brand Safety Standards
The shutdown of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a key organization that set unified standards for brand safety, has left a void in the industry. GARM played a pivotal role in providing brands with a central framework to ensure safe ad placements across multiple platforms. Without it, advertisers are facing a more fragmented environment, with different platforms applying varying degrees of control and enforcement.
- Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have pulled back from global brand safety commitments, further complicating the landscape for brands that want to ensure their ads aren’t associated with harmful or inappropriate content. This pull back may, in some time extend a large gamut of publishers in the open internet as well.
- This decentralization has pushed the responsibility for brand safety further onto ad tech platforms and advertisers themselves. As a result, brands are increasingly turning to platform-specific solutions to regain control and reduce risk.
Heightened Consumer Expectations
Consumer expectations around brand safety have also shifted. Today’s consumers are more socially conscious than ever before, with 55% of consumers claiming that they would stop buying from a brand whose ads appear next to offensive content, according to a study by Edelman Trust Barometer. This makes brand safety not only an operational necessity but also a matter of maintaining consumer trust and loyalty.
The Role of Ad Fraud in Brand Safety
Another growing concern in the current brand safety landscape is ad fraud. Fraudulent ads and invalid traffic (IVT) are rampant in the programmatic space. Ad fraud does not only waste ad spend but can also compromise brand safety by serving ads on fraudulent or low-quality sites. The IAB estimates that $8.2 billion is lost to ad fraud annually, with a significant portion of that impacting programmatic advertising.
Programmatic’s Growing Complexity
The increasing fragmentation of programmatic channels—CTV, mobile, social, desktop, etc.—adds another layer of complexity. Each channel has its own set of content risks, meaning that advertisers must take a channel-specific approach to brand safety. For example, CTV might have more control over content curation, while mobile web or social media are more prone to user-generated content (UGC), which is notoriously difficult to moderate.
Looking Forward
As the programmatic advertising ecosystem continues to evolve, brands will need to adopt a more sophisticated, data-driven approach to brand safety. With $2.4 billion already lost to ads served on inappropriate content, according to CHEQ, and the increasing emphasis on brand safety as a driver of consumer trust, it’s clear that the future of programmatic advertising will heavily depend on how well brands can protect their image while maintaining reach and relevance. One thing is apparent in the current scheme of things: ensuring brand safety requires more than just basic filtering. With decentralization well and truly in process, adtech platforms must step up and take responsibility for delivering comprehensive and reliable brand safety measures. These measures often involve a combination of third-party partnerships and proprietary brand safety controls to protect advertisers and ensure that their ads are placed in appropriate environments. Very often, Adtech platforms come to boast of a plethora of 3rd party partnerships in place to ensure brand safety, without having the most basic of proprietary IVT Control and Brand Safety measures in place. This screams of a reactive approach to brand safety rather than a proactive one. IVT and Brand Safety filters, especially in programmatic environments, should be well-equipped for.
The Role of AI in Brand Safety
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the core of the most effective brand safety solutions. By leveraging AI, platforms like NexVerse.ai can analyze massive amounts of data in real-time, ensuring that ads are only shown in brand-safe environments. AI’s ability to constantly monitor and learn from user behavior, content trends, and historical data allows it to proactively identify potentially harmful placements before an ad is served. Here’s how AI-driven brand safety works at NexVerse:
- Pre-Bid Blocking: Our platform uses pre-bid filtering powered by AI to ensure that ads are never placed in harmful environments. Before any bid is placed, the content is analyzed for potential risks such as inappropriate content, disinformation, or unsafe user-generated material. This process ensures that only brand-safe inventory is bid on, reducing the likelihood of an ad being shown next to harmful content.
- Real-Time Monitoring and Adjustments: Even after the ad is served, AI is used to continuously monitor the placement in real-time. If the content on the page changes or if user-generated content becomes problematic, the system can react immediately to either block the ad or adjust bidding strategies accordingly.
- Proprietary Brand Safety Algorithms: NexVerse has developed its own proprietary brand safety algorithms that integrate contextual analysis, sentiment detection, and language filtering to ensure ads align with brand values. Our algorithms can detect nuances in content, helping advertisers avoid not just harmful but also misaligned content that might not reflect a brand’s message or target audience.
The Importance of Third-Party Partnerships
While proprietary brand safety controls offer a tailored, context-specific approach, third-party verification remains a vital part of a comprehensive brand safety strategy. Leading verification companies like IAS, DoubleVerify, and MOAT offer independent checks on ad placements, validating impressions and flagging potentially unsafe environments. Combining proprietary tools with third-party solutions helps create a multi-layered brand safety shield. Third-party solutions provide an independent layer of accountability that assures advertisers their ads are appearing in brand-safe environments. They offer transparent reporting and add credibility to the safety measures already in place. Additionally, each platform (CTV, mobile, web, social media) has its own risks. Third-party partners help ensure consistency across all platforms, particularly in environments where content moderation is more challenging, like social media or user-generated content platforms. Many third-party verification partners offer compliance with global brand safety standards (e.g., TAG, IAB), ensuring that your brand safety measures meet industry expectations from the outset, while you strengthen your internal controls.
Securing the Future of Programmatic with Robust Brand Safety
As the programmatic landscape continues to evolve, the need for a balanced, multi-layered approach to brand safety has never been more critical. With the rise of privacy regulations, the increasing sophistication of fraudulent activity, and the growing demand for relevant, consumer-friendly ad experiences, it is essential for brands, advertisers, and publishers to adopt a holistic strategy. At Nexverse, we believe that brand safety is not just about protecting reputation—it’s about fostering trust, driving meaningful engagement, and ultimately delivering a better advertising ecosystem. By leveraging a combination of third-party partnerships and proprietary brand safety controls, we aim to ensure that every ad reaches the right audience, in the right context, and in a way that resonates with consumers. In a world where advertising dollars are under constant scrutiny, ensuring a safe, transparent, and effective ad environment is no longer an option—it’s a necessity. With the right strategies and tools in place, brands can confidently navigate the programmatic landscape while maintaining brand integrity and fostering consumer trust. fostering consumer trust. The future of programmatic is one where brand safety and brand suitability go hand in hand, and Nexverse is committed to leading that charge.