Roman Vrublivskyi is the experienced CEO of Attekmi, a global ad tech company that provides white-label programmatic solutions.
For modern marketers, brand safety is among the most crucial tasks since around half of customers state that they are likely to stop using a service or a product in case they see the brand’s ads next to inappropriate content. That is a statistical fact, but I agree with it.
However, the definition of inappropriate content is rather vague, which turns ensuring brand safety into a much more complex process.
Why Keyword Blocking Is The Wrong Measure
In my opinion, creating blacklists of keywords is the most standard brand safety measure, as well as its most typical trap. Many advertisers simply go too far with keyword blocking—they try to avoid inappropriate content, but their ads end up on low-quality websites and deliver poor performance.
For instance, content about movies, actors and directors is usually safe—it is all about culture. Now, let’s imagine a high-quality source featuring an article about The Walking Dead TV series. An advertiser blocking the word “dead” will not get the inventory there, even though the content is safe and the audience is exactly what a marketer needs. What is the result? A missed opportunity for both an advertiser and publisher. A marketer fails to deliver an ad to the targeted users, while a website owner struggles to monetize the inventory.
Another example (which is pretty well known) is the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. News publishers who started covering this topic faced significant losses in profit since a lot of advertisers considered the disease-related content negative and simply started blocking their pages.
Is Inappropriate Content Really That Dangerous?
Certain types of content (e.g., articles about gambling) are not the best place for advertisers to deliver their ads. However, many other categories that are often considered inappropriate bring virtually no harm to a brand’s reputation.
And the statistics prove this. Stagwell released a news advertising study indicating a small difference in brand performance across different types of articles. Among other findings, Gen-Z has an average purchase intent of 69% for brands that placed ads in the sports context. The rate for the ads shown next to high-quality news about the Middle East conflict is 65%.
Sports is usually considered a safe topic, while the conflict in the Middle East is a risky one. As we can see, the difference in purchase intent is insignificant.
However, despite the results, many advertisers still prefer to block such topics, which negatively affects the income of news websites. They often cover controversial topics, and even premium publishers tend to look unsafe for marketers.
How To Avoid The Keyword-Blocking Trap
Keyword blocking, as a tactic, can be applied, but with caution. You need to be sure that you are blocking exactly the keywords you need to avoid. Additionally, you can take the following steps:
• Experiment with programmatic direct and preferred deals: Both these models imply buying ad space directly from a publisher (on a mandatory or optional basis), which eliminates the need for auctions and intermediaries. Therefore, you always know who you are buying ad inventory from and can be sure that the content there is relevant and safe to your brand.
• Join private marketplaces: These are private advertising marketplaces that can be accessed only by invitation. If you are invited to join, you get an opportunity to access premium inventory, which also usually implies its safety.
• Implement AI-powered contextual targeting: This will help you analyze the real nature of the content and make sure that your ads are delivered within a safe environment.
Are Advertisers The Only Ones Responsible For Brand Safety?
Even though advertisers are the ones who often inflate their blocked keyword lists, brand safety is still a responsibility shared between marketers, publishers and tech providers. With all the parties contributing to brand safety, the entire advertising ecosystem will become more effective.
So, for tech providers, the task is rather simple: They need to equip their solutions with relevant features like advanced targeting and traffic filtering capabilities, contextual targeting functionalities, etc. But what about publishers?
First of all, they should deliver only high-quality content. Posting, for instance, fake news, will not help them drive income. Secondly, it is essential to avoid invalid traffic. This can be done with various detection tools. Joining private auctions or cooperating with selected advertisers via direct or preferred deals is also a way to go. I also highly recommend using ads.txt and sellers.json files to enable media buyers to confirm that they are working with an approved seller.
Like marketers, publishers can also create lists of blocked keywords to prevent certain ads from appearing on their websites (i.e., these are often ads related to gambling and adult content).
Final Words
In my opinion, the main danger of ensuring brand safety is going too far with keyword blocking—this often leads to missed opportunities for both advertisers and publishers. Therefore, it is crucial to select keywords carefully and support the brand safety strategy with additional measures like contextual targeting or going for programmatic direct deals.
This helps to share the responsibility and create a “healthier” advertising environment for all the participants. As for tech providers, I think that they should keep an eye on brand safety trends and make sure that their solutions are able to meet the needs of advertisers and publishers.
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