The saying “you are the company that you keep” is a longtime phrase for a reason: It means that the types of people you surround yourself with are a reflection of you as a person. This concept can be applied to brands, as well.
For example, audience studies overwhelmingly find that where a brand’s ad can be found influences perception of the brand or product. Research by Integral Ad Science found that 82% of consumers say it’s important the content surrounding online ads is appropriate, and half say they are likely to stop using a product or service of a brand whose ad appears near inappropriate content.
Brand decision makers, however, don’t always register that concern at the same level: Fewer than one in four (24%) of marketers consider ensuring brand safety and suitability a top concern for media investments, according to findings from The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2025 Outlook Study.
What Is Brand Safety?
Brand safety is the practice of ensuring your brand — including ads, mentions, visuals, etc. — only appears in placements that align with your values and uphold its reputation. When ads appear alongside content (either other ads or editorial features) that doesn’t align with your brand or you want to be associated with, this can impact audience perception of, and actions toward, the brand.
That’s why it’s important to define the areas, such as industries, topics, or themes, that don’t align with your brand or could negatively affect perception. These may include harmful or hateful speech or groups, drugs or alcohol, weapons, gambling, violence, sexuality, misinformation, or politics, to name a few. Beyond the overall reputation, prioritizing brand safety protects ad spend and ability to convert.
How Does Brand Safety Work?
Previously, ads were commonly purchased as direct buys, meaning a media buyer picked the online placement based on knowing that the website attracts an audience similar to their target customer. Online, the ad generally would run for a set timeframe or number of impressions.
Today, media buyers aren’t securing the ideal placements based on location as much as they are targeting the right person. Through technology, inputs, and algorithms, ads are matched with viewers and can follow the user, being shown when ad space is available where they are online, in real time. These practices are known as programmatic advertising and behavioral targeting.
This is where the need for brand safety is important for marketers to ensure their ad isn’t placed on a site or page, or next to another ad, that goes against its reputation.
Brand Safety in Advertising Campaigns
Ensure brand safety is protected during a campaign by setting it up to align with expectations and requirements. Consider the following before launching a campaign:
- Align internally on your brand story, and where it falls regarding brand safety and brand sustainability (what your brand is okay being associated with).
- Choose a trusting and established advertising partner who has tools and inventory to support your campaign needs.
- Set information for the ad campaign — inclusion or exclusion keywords or topics, levels of tolerance by segment, integrations that guide placements, etc.
Why Is Brand Safety Important to Advertisers?
As an advertiser, brand safety is essential to keep in good standing with both your audience and ad spend. Audiences don’t always consider or understand the nuances of media buying, so they can equate the content or information near an ad as complementary, or that the ad was purchased to be placed there.
When your ads are placed in spots you don’t want them, you aren’t making good use of your ad budget. Impressions can be wasted on the wrong audience, and click throughs on the ad may not be your ideal customer, reducing the return on ad spend.
Why Is Brand Safety Important for Publishers?
Brand safety is key for publishers’ credibility. If a publisher can’t be trusted with its ad placements, advertisers may not want to work with them. This could result in a loss of advertising revenue and publisher reputation.
Remain transparent to advertisers on brand safety protocols by understanding how to accommodate advertiser requests, providing transparency in your guidelines, and staying current with the technology used to ensure brand safety requests.
Brand Safety and ROI
The balance of brand safety and maximum return on investment for ad spend requires continuous attention. Before working with a vendor or platform, define your own brand standards, set up the campaign with the correct information, and review data so outcomes align with expectations. The balance between tolerance of risk levels can change outcomes, so consider where your brand lies within each.
By setting brand safety categories and risk tolerance levels, you are also ensuring the right types of people have the opportunity to be served your ad, which leads to your brand’s ideal customer profile clicking it. That is the ideal return on ad spend.
Verification and Monitoring
Advertisers and publishers can ensure brand safety through ad verification and monitoring solutions, which ensure that digital ads are delivered as expected. Verification, often carried out by third-party vendors, audits ad delivery against the campaign’s criteria for safety and relevance.
Once set up, typically through a piece of code as a tag, the tag collects information about the ad’s placement, including websites, audience, locations, and more. It can also detect fraudulent activity like bots or click farms. Advertisers can monitor the data collected in near real-time to ensure brand safety is being maintained, and ad spend is being used as anticipated.
Best Practices to Ensure Brand Safety
Brand safety best practices aren’t simply good rules to consider, they’re something that you want to be thoughtful of to ensure your brand’s reputation and campaign outcome thrive.
Work With Reputable Advertising Platforms and Networks
Find a platform that is transparent about how it ensures brand safety. Many networks have their own tools or work with third-party verifiers. For example, Taboola offers a three-pillar approach to ensure brand safety and brand suitability, while partnering with verifiers to ensure targeting rules are upheld:
- Environment: Control over the sites and article topics on which you want your brand to appear.
- Experience: Flexibility of how your ads are served on the page and what surrounds them.
- Accountability: Partnerships with leading safety, verification, and measurement platforms.
Set Parameters for Ad Placements
Once you have vetted a platform to support brand safety, refine inputs for your ads and campaigns with the following:
- Pre-bid filters: Categories where a placement won’t be considered.
- Inclusion and exclusion lists: Websites, apps, URLs, or categories that ads specifically can or cannot appear in.
- Keyword blocking: Specific words or phrases the ad will not display by.
- Platform-specific controls or verifications.
Don’t Be Too Strict With Settings
While you want to be mindful to keep brand safety in check, setting parameters that are too tight can potentially have negative effects. By excluding too many categories, keywords, or locations, you could be eliminating placements where your audiences are, or paying more due to limited inventory or missing value placements. Find the balance between caution and strategy when applying brand standard practices.
Key Takeaways
With consumers equating your brand to its placements, defining and maintaining your brand safety is critical. Implementing brand safety requires defining unsuitable topics and applying tools like filters and exclusion lists to control ad placements. Continuous monitoring and finding a balance between strict controls and sufficient reach are essential for both advertisers protecting their spend and publishers maintaining credibility.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Brand safety vs. brand suitability: What’s the difference?
Brand safety is about brands avoiding content that is considered to be harmful, inappropriate, or illegal. The related concept of brand suitability is where content that the brand deems inappropriate to be associated with is excluded.
What types of content should be excluded for brand safety?
Anything widely regarded as harmful or negative should be excluded for brand safety. Examples of these topics include hate speech, harmful language, factually inaccurate information, or illegal substances or activities. Additional considerations when evaluating brand safety or brand suitability standards may include topics or specific sites related to politics, science, health, or social issues.
How do tools like IAS, DoubleVerify, and Moat work?
Ad verification tools — such as Integral Ad Science (IAS), DoubleVerify (DV), and Moat, among others — provide a check for advertisers and publishers to ensure ads are being placed where and how they are intended. They watch for ad fraud, brand safety, compliance, targeting, and viewability. They help optimize for ad efficiency, reputation, reach, and transparency.
Can I integrate brand safety solutions with my DSP?
Look for DSPs that offer integrated providers, such as IAS, DoubleVerify, and MOAT, as part of their platform through a Brand Safety Pre-Bid. This allows for granular brand safety and brand sustainability adjustments all in one solution.
What tools or platforms help maintain brand safety?
Choose a partner that supports brands looking to maintain their safety and sustainability. Ask what tools are available to you around brand safety and brand sustainability, including knowledge centers, chats, resource sections, integrations, or help centers.
