It's 2021! Brand Safety, Trust & Privacy for Advertisers.

The coronavirus disease or the COVID-19 has seen its preliminary documented affected person in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since that time, this virus has been scattering across the globe too fast way too quickly than anyone imagined, and as in step with WHO this disease was declared a pandemic by March 2020 resulting in the shutdown of the whole country.

With this pandemic, there were innumerable difficulties to each and every person, and thus not even leaving the businesses. Several businesses face one of the most common difficulties which is brand safety. It is a very common fact that view-ability, readability, and ROI are some of the critical standards and are considered by any brand when buying any ad inventory.

Another thought that crosses their mind when collaborating with publishers or advertisers, might be to use the top qualities of the content to get a great brand image. Every advertiser hopes to get the most relevant and pertinent users for their campaigns, but obviously not at the cost of having any unsafe content. And this is where brand safety will play its assigned role!

Before understanding the importance, let us have a glimpse of what is brand safety?

Introduction to brand safety!

Brand safety measures are perfectly designed for protecting the online reputation of any brand and this will be done by restricting the brand from collaborating with any negative or inappropriate content.

A famous quote says: “Brand safety is in the eye of the beholder—it all depends on what is or is not appropriate for the brand. For example, an R-rated action film might have different standards than a baby products company.”

Now let us understand why we say that brand safety is a crucial aspect?

Almost all the small and medium-size publishers are not having much knowledge about brand safety as a practice. And as a result, they definitely miss out on ad money monetisation prospects for them. Even the big and huge publishers such as news and magazine websites are trying hard to offer correct and pertinent information without making the use of any blacklisted or blocked keyword and losing out on any of these opportunities.

Brand safety is a measure that will protect the publishers from any kind of risks also. Some of the potential risks included are illegally downloaded ads, fraudulent e-commerce ads, and invalid traffic. These might be exterminated with the publisher’s brand equity. Thus, there is a need to have a complete understanding of brand safety so that no publisher will avoid any kind of chance to leave money on their tables.

What steps must be taken by the publishers?

• Have a check of your current position: Not just the use of blacklisted keywords, the advertisers should also consider their domain rights, a score of view-ability, fill rate, and historical bid price of the website you own. If in any of the cases, these numbers don’t match the standard of the advertiser, you can any moment be removed from the campaign of the advertiser. Thus, it is advisable for you to have a check on these numbers so that you avoid any penalty by the brand safety controllers.

• Do not try to touch the invalid traffic: When in contact with the non-human traffic, you might take down the brand safety score drastically. If by any chance any demand-side system catches a glimpse of any unusual traffic on your site they might mark your website as unsafe and even other buyers can’t see you then. Undeniably, this is true that the publishers can’t completely avoid the unusual traffic, in any if such case, they must be straightforward and the percentage of the invalid traffic should be shared in the policy of your website.

• Try to review the demand sources: It is suggested for you to choose the demand partners very carefully. Double ensure that they take and have adequate safety measures in the right place to avoid any wrongdoing like ad injection fraud, domain spoofing, and a lot more.

• Try to take some help from brand safety ventures: If you are constantly facing a declining fill rate and the reason is not known to you, then chances are the advertisers might have blacklisted or blocked you. There are innumerable reasons for this but don’t rule out the blacklisting at any cost. It is advisable to work directly with some of the prominent brand safety ventures or vendors. Along with the services for protections, they will also offer the perfect and required consultation to make a balance between genuine content and ad revenue.

• Have a clear understanding of brand safety: Brand safety is not only important for the advertisers but is also a vital concept for publishers of any size. Thus, it is well said that when you learn more about any problem, then you get closer to the solution.

Marketers, as well as their businesses, had been somewhat ignorant about the occurrence of keyword blocking and brand safety. Any publisher will find it really embarrassing to get some screenshots from the advertisers related to their keyword usage on any disinformation websites and some extra hatred websites.