Brand safety is a set of practices used to protect a brand’s reputation by preventing its advertisements from appearing next to inappropriate or harmful content. This strategy ensures ads do not end up on websites or apps featuring content like hate speech, illegal acts, or violence. Without these protections, a brand risks losing consumer trust and inadvertently funding malicious creators.
What is Brand safety?
Brand safety represents the minimum standard of protection for an advertiser. It focuses on avoiding content that is generally considered toxic or unsafe for any business, regardless of the industry. The global digital advertising industry identifies a specific list called the "Dirty Dozen" categories to avoid, which includes military conflict, obscenity, drugs, tobacco, adult content, arms, crime, death, piracy, hate speech, terrorism, and spam. To address modern challenges, the IAB added "fake news" as a 13th category for brands to monitor.
Why Brand safety matters
Maintaining a safe environment for advertising is critical because consumers judge brands by the company they keep. If an ad appears next to a extremist video or a child predator controversy, the brand is often seen as tacitly supporting that content.
- Consumer expectations: Audience perception is a main driver for these policies. 82% of consumers say it is important that the content surrounding online ads is appropriate.
- Financial risk: Major companies have historically pulled budgets when safety is compromised. For example, P&G cut digital ad spending by $140 million due to brand safety concerns.
- Preventing advertiser exodus: Platforms that fail to maintain safety standards often see a loss of trust. High-profile brands have previously pulled ads from YouTube, Disney, and X when trust dwindled.
How Brand safety works
Brand safety systems typically function through three layers of defense. First, external layers from Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) filter out illegal or offensive websites. Second, internal security layers block malware and known non-safe applications. Third, a customizable layer allows advertisers to tailor blocks based on their specific needs.
To achieve this, technology providers use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the context of a page. This tech reads titles, URLs, and body text to categorize the content before an ad is placed. Some providers have high accuracy in these automated checks; for instance, RTB House achieved a 92.28% brand safety pass rate in an IAS audit.
Brand Safety vs. Brand Suitability
While these terms are related, they serve different goals. Safety is about avoiding universal "bads." Suitability is about subjective alignment with a brand’s specific identity.
| Feature | Brand Safety | Brand Suitability |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Avoid harm and toxic content | Align with brand values and tone |
| Application | Universal (applies to all brands) | Subjective (varies by brand) |
| Example | Avoiding hate speech or crime | A vegan brand avoiding a fishing app |
| Risk | Reputation damage and PR disasters | Poor engagement or brand mismatch |
Best practices
Buy directly from trusted publishers. This allows advertisers to address safety concerns directly with the media owner rather than relying solely on automated auctions.
Use the Ads.txt initiative. This IAB standard allows buyers to verify that a seller is actually authorized to sell a specific publisher's inventory, reducing the risk of ad fraud.
Maintain inclusion and exclusion lists. Create "whitelists" of approved, safe domains and "blacklists" of known harmful sites. Update these lists regularly to account for new domains.
Monitor across multiple languages. Ensure your brand safety tools can filter keywords in all languages where you run ads. A topic that is safe in English might be problematic in another language due to local political contexts.
Employ third-party vendors. Use watchdog services like NewsGuard or Ad Fontes Media to verify that ads are only placed with "credible" news sources.
Common mistakes
Mistake: Setting and forgetting your lists. Content evolves, and a site that was safe yesterday may host harmful content today. Fix: Review exclusion lists weekly and use automated tools that update in real-time.
Mistake: Over-blocking keywords. If you block every term even loosely related to "death" or "crash," you may lose the ability to reach audiences on legitimate news sites. Fix: Use NLP tools that understand context rather than just specific keywords.
Mistake: Ignoring anonymous traffic. Bots and non-human traffic often cluster on unsafe sites. Fix: Actively reject anonymous traffic in your DSP settings to ensure your ads reach real humans.
Mistake: Relying only on safety and ignoring suitability. You might avoid "dangerous" content but still end up on a site that contradicts your brand's core values. Fix: Define your brand's specific "suitability" standards alongside general safety rules.
FAQ
What is the "Dirty Dozen" in brand safety? It is a list of twelve content categories that the global advertising industry generally agrees are unsafe for ads. These include themes like military conflict, drugs, adult content, and hate speech.
How does brand safety differ from brand suitability? Safety is the "floor" meant to protect all brands from illegal or toxic content. Suitability is the "ceiling" meant to align ads with a specific brand's unique values and tone.
What is the role of the IAB in brand safety? The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) sets industry standards and initiatives. Examples include the Ads.txt project for seller verification and the addition of "fake news" to the list of unsafe content categories.
Can brand safety impact the scale of my campaign? Yes. Strict safety settings can limit the number of sites where your ads can appear. The goal is to balance safety with scale by using contextual AI that understands when a keyword is used in a safe news context versus a harmful one.
Is brand safety relevant in a cookieless future? Yes. Modern brand safety solutions rely on contextual targeting and Natural Language Processing rather than third-party tracking cookies. These tools analyze the content of the page itself to determine safety.
