#brandsafetysolutions

If you’re currently managing YouTube Video Action Campaigns within Display & Video 360 (DV360), there’s a significant update on the horizon that you’ll need to prepare for. Started in October 2024, Demand Gen campaigns will become a core feature of DV360. This transition will expand your campaign capabilities, offering enhanced reach, new creative formats, and advanced audience targeting

In this article, we’ll break down what this shift means, how it impacts your current campaigns, and the steps you can take to get ready for the change.

Brands spend millions daily on programmatic advertisements with the belief that the ads are shown to genuine users on authentic websites. The truth is that an increasing number of this inventory does not cater to any readership, rather to bids. The advent of artificial intelligence has led to the creation of content farms that produce articles purely based on the objective of getting advertised. 

The term used for such content is referred to as AI slop and poses one of the most significant challenges to media quality and brand safety in digital advertisement today. 

When a media team says, ‘we’re running a pan-India video campaign,’ they’re treating India as a single content environment. But it isn’t. 

India is a diverse market. Millions of content pieces go live on various video platforms every day. Each operating in a different language, shaped by different cultural norms, with entirely different definitions of what is acceptable, sensitive, or harmful.  

This is exactly where the risk begins.  

As an advertiser running programmatic ad campaigns across video platforms, you assume your targeting and exclusions are doing their job

Recently, advertisers raised concerns when their ads on Spotify were found appearing alongside sexually explicit audio content. The issue wasn’t the platform but the association.

These brands never intended to be associated with such content. The ads were placed through automated digital advertising systems designed to maximize reach and efficiency. Yet, the brands got associated.

This is exactly what happens to brands in the digital advertising ecosystem. Ads today travel across thousands of websites, videos, and platforms through automated systems. While brands carefully plan their messaging and targeting, they don’t always have visibility into where their ads finally appear.

Recently, advertisers raised concerns when their ads on Spotify were found appearing alongside sexually explicit audio content. The issue wasn’t the platform but the association.

These brands never intended to be associated with such content. The ads were placed through automated digital advertising systems designed to maximize reach and efficiency. Yet, the brands got associated.

This is exactly what happens to brands in the digital advertising ecosystem. Ads today travel across thousands of websites, videos, and platforms through automated systems. While brands carefully plan their messaging and targeting, they don’t always have visibility into where their ads finally appear.

Competitors or affiliates may bid on your brand keywords, potentially driving up costs and diluting your brand’s presence. A comprehensive affiliate monitoring tool needs to be in place to safeguard your affiliate marketing spend and protect your brand reputation.  Identify affiliate and competition bidding on your brand keywords along with whitespaces across locations for own and competition keywords.   

Brand bidding fraud costs approx. $1.3 billion each year as competitors bid on branded keywords. Over 60% of brand terms are targeted by competitors, inflating cost-per-click (CPC) by up to 30% and reducing conversion rates by 5-10%. This not only drives up advertising costs but also dilutes brand recognition, as 50% of users may click on a competitor’s ad when searching for a brand name. This leads to confusion and lost customers.  

Businesses must actively monitor and optimize their paid search campaigns while implementing robust brand safety solutions to mitigate these risks. 

Imagine working countless hours to perfect your brand identity and persona, only to have it decimated in the mind of a potential customer in a matter of seconds.

This isn’t a hypothetical horror story.

Most brand owners and teams spend considerable time and even more effort building their brand. It’s a harsh reality for many brands in the recent past. The culprit? Lack of vigilance to ensure brand safety.

A few years ago, a media buying agency pulled its advertising budgets from YouTube and Google Display advertising platforms because of an article highlighting the appearance of ads next to neo-nazi and other forms of extremist content.

Just like the placement of ads next to ‘wrong’ content is bad for the brand’s perception, placement of the same ads next to complementary content can potentially drive better results. Ensuring the same is known as ensuring brand relevancy in digital advertising.

Brand safety is the measure to ensure that brand ads appear in a relevant and safe environment. As the digital landscape evolves, protecting the image of the brand is an essential task, and companies want to distance themselves from destructive or false content.

This includes selecting places where ads will appear and using technology to filter unsafe or bad environments. Some other effective measures include working with verified publishers, using AI-ML-based content verification tools, and continuously monitoring ad performance.