4 Key Factors of Technical Brand Safety

Technical challenges are a constant threat to any brand’s safety. Now that governing bodies are taking notice of the threat to private information for consumers, they are passing regulations and laws curbing certain technologies and bringing CEOs to task on personal data sharing.

You not only have to manage your employees, but you also have to take care of your marketing strategies, creative process and you have to make sure that your ads are within legal standards and compliance. To top it all off, social networks don’t seem to have an interest in policing the advertising network and now you are the ones left trying to solve problems in places where you have limited access to do so.

We’ve already discussed how to keep your brand safe contextually. As we continue to look at the three pillars of Brand Safety, here are 4 technical things you should focus on to keep your brand safe in the advertising space.

1. In-House Protection

You lock the front door on your home before you leave or before you go to bed, right? Well, protecting your brand online is no different. You need to make sure your door has a sturdy lock and that you have good habits in place to ward off unwanted attacks or attention. Ensure that your customers feel safe and their data is kept under lock and key. Consumer data often is placed on servers that are on the cloud. Make sure a solid privacy policy and terms and conditions are set up and regularly updated to comply with new laws and regulations.

You also don’t want to invite anyone to your house party that shouldn’t be there! For advertisers, ad verification can help you determine if you’re getting bad clicks from bots, serving on junk sites, or other spam activity. This can drive up CPMs and set a precedence for bad performance. Also, it’s important to ensure that your publishers set up ad verification as well to avoid inviting bad advertisers to their partner’s website or content. Ad verification can help to prevent phishing ads, inappropriate ad content, and ads for illegal products. Implementing ad verification will aid you in building trust with your consumers, and the publishers you are advertising with.

2. Understand Who You Are Trusting

It could be that the content you’re advertising on is too much for your brand or not enough: too violent, too boring, too academic, not academic enough, and so on. The biggest reason advertisers struggle with safety is they can’t control the environment on a scalable basis. Social networks don’t seem to have an interest in policing and now you are the ones left trying to solve the problem in places where you have limited access to do so.

Many of these issues will be addressed through technologies that specialize in contextual relevance, but in the larger picture, your brand needs to feel not just safe, but thrive with publishing partners. This can sometimes be remedied by working directly with publishers, but oftentimes, the sheer volume of work can make this cumbersome.

Imagine placing individual orders with each YouTuber, website, or network that you wish to advertise with. Some businesses do it, but if you lack the resources or manpower, a trustworthy ad-serving method is the way to go, including implementing a negative strategy and monitoring to ensure your placements drive better conversions and stay within regulations.

3. Stay Abreast of New Regulations

Speaking of regulations, you also have to ensure that you comply with your industry’s standards for ad creative. For example, the financial, firearms, and health space have regulations for ad creative to ensure that advertising is truthful and representative of the product or service being advertised.

There have been quite a few acts and regulations passed recently calling for more protection for the user. These include:

  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) — makes privacy on the internet a “default” instead of a privilege for EU residents. The key is consent, you must ask and keep records that you have permission to market or keep data on a customer.
  • CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) — CCPA gives California residents the right to opt-out of the sale of their personal information as well as the ability to not be discriminated against for opting out.

Being out of compliance can also cost you actual real-life fines from compliance and regulatory bodies if you don’t stay on top of changing regulations and technology.

4 . Technologies Evolve With or Without You

As you know, technology is always changing, both in the advertiser and publisher space. New places to advertise are emerging with TikTok’s Business Credit and Creator Fund going live and new contenders in the contextual ad space.

Facebook has lowered its standards for video monetization, which has caused many “business pages” to be eligible for ad delivery. This may mean that more advertisers may be connected with amateur content and brands with potentially damaging content seemingly “sponsored” by the advertisers. Facebook has been in hot water a lot over the past year, because of their data privacy scandal — which caused government agencies and big corporations alike to pull, and possibly stay out of Facebook advertising.

In addition, Google’s announcement that they will no longer support third-party cookies in the Chrome browser creates a significant issue with many B2C or DTC brands dependent on third-party cookies to advertise. However, third-party cookies can be worked around. Other mediums (such as paid search) use contextualization to sell ads successfully and new technologies, such as CatapultX, can make your life as an advertiser easier.

Next Steps in Brand Safety

It can be easy to focus all of your efforts and energy internally during the advertising process, but you have to ensure that you keep an eye on the trends outside of your brand’s house. This will help you to keep abreast of the latest regulations and technologies in advertising ensuring that your brand stays safe and relevant.

Next week we will conclude this series by diving into using the latest technologies to advertise your brand contextually.

Founded in 2019, CatapultX is an AI-based platform at the forefront of innovative video marketing. Serving contextually relevant video ads that don’t interfere with consumer experience, CatapultX brings a profitable, engaging and enjoyable experience to publishers, advertisers and audiences. If you are interested in expanding the profitability of your content or building a more robust advertising portfolio, reach out to us at info@catapultx.com or set up a meeting with someone from our sales team.