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Share on XFrom AI-generated content to influencers, why the video-first era is redefining how marketers manage quality and brand risk
Every marketer can feel the shift. Budgets are moving decisively toward social media and digital video, and for good reason. These mediums are where attention lives, culture forms, and consumer decisions increasingly happen.
But the moment your ad spend enters social and digital video environments, it’s no longer just executing against a media plan — it’s handed over to algorithms and content ecosystems that are increasingly unpredictable. In that reality, brand safety and suitability have to be actively protected.
IAS’s 2026 Industry Pulse Report, which surveys nearly 300 industry experts to understand their perspectives on media challenges and opportunities in the coming year, confirms just how concentrated this focus has become. Media experts cite:
- Digital Video: 88% as a top investment priority
- Social Media: 84% as a top investment priority
The industry is clearly all in. But with that commitment comes a new level of responsibility around media quality, a commitment that requires smarter, more adaptive approaches than ever before.
Media Quality Is Getting Harder to Protect
With an expected 14.9% growth in ad spend on social media to reach $306.4 billion in 2026, the pressure on ensuring media quality is intensifying. The volume, speed, and variability of content have outpaced traditional safeguards, leaving marketers exposed in ways that didn’t exist just a few years ago — think unpredictable AI-generated content and posts going viral by the minute.
According to media experts, some of today’s biggest challenges within social media and digital video include:
- The rapid rise of AI-generated content
- Growing creator and influencer suitability risks
- Ongoing lack of transparency into media quality metrics
Each of these issues alone is difficult to manage. Together, they create an environment where static controls simply can’t keep up.
Let’s dive into industry experts’ concerns behind each of these challenges — and what marketers can do about them.
Industry Expert Challenge 1: The Rise of AI Generated Content
Generative AI has moved quickly from experimentation to everyday content creation. While it brings efficiency and scale, it also introduces new risks that are difficult to identify in real time.
When it comes to AI-generated content, industry concern is already high:
- 83% of experts say the increasing amount of AI-generated content on social media is a major concern requiring continuous monitoring
- 86% say the ability to identify, classify, and avoid AI-generated content on digital video is critically needed
The challenge isn’t just volume. It’s velocity. AI-driven content can be produced, altered, and distributed faster than legacy tools can respond. Maintaining trust in this environment requires brand suitability tools that can assess content in real-time, not after it’s already run.
Industry Expert Challenge 2: Influencer Suitability Risks
Influencer and creator-led marketing continues to grow at an extraordinary pace. With that growth comes a different kind of suitability challenge, one that extends beyond individual posts or videos. Today, brands are expected to evaluate not only the content, but the creator behind it.
Media experts are clear on how important this has become:
- 87% prioritize the suitability of the influencer or creator for digital video
- 82% prioritize influencer suitability for social media content
A single misalignment can undermine brand trust and campaign performance. For example, a finance influencer who touts “get rich quick” tactics could be misaligned with a traditional bank or retirement planning firm. Though both are in the financial industry, the messages they send to their respective audiences are very different.
Success in influencer spaces depends on understanding the full context—who is speaking, what they represent, and how audiences engage with them over time.
Industry Expert Challenge 3: Lack of Transparency into Media Quality Metrics
Even as marketers push for performance and scale, many are still struggling with a basic requirement: transparency.
- 70% of experts believe a lack of transparency around media quality metrics on social platforms will negatively impact their media spend
When marketers can’t clearly see where ads are running, or why certain inventory decisions are being made, it becomes nearly impossible to invest with confidence. Transparency isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s foundational to effectively investing in social media platforms and within digital video environments.
Overcoming Media Challenges
Many brand safety and suitability solutions still rely on rigid, binary rules that force trade-offs between scale and control. These static approaches weren’t designed for algorithm-driven environments where content changes moment by moment.
To keep pace, marketers need controls that can:
- Adapt in real time as content evolves
- Move beyond simple “safe or unsafe” decisions
- Deliver transparency without sacrificing scale
Media experts agree on the path forward. In fact, 84% of experts say leveraging sophisticated third-party measurement and optimization is essential to effectively addressing AI-generated risks on social media and within digital video.
This is where intelligence, not just filtering, makes the difference.
How IAS Helps Marketers Move Forward with Confidence
IAS delivers the advanced, scalable solutions marketers need to protect media quality while still maximizing performance.
Industry-Leading Multimedia Frame-by-Frame Intelligence
Evaluating only the beginning or end of a video is no longer enough. IAS’s classification uses advanced AI to analyze image, audio, and text signals at the frame-by-frame level—processing more than 72 years of video content every day—to deliver the accuracy required to identify content your brand deems unsuitable and detect emerging risks such as rapidly evolving content trends that may impact brand suitability at scale.
Customized, Pre-Bid Control
IAS’s Social Optimization solution moves beyond one-size-fits-all settings. This AI-powered, pre-bid solution allows marketers to create customized suitability profiles that reflect their unique brand standards and apply them in real time.
The impact is measurable:
- 65% decrease in brand suitability fail rates just two months after implementation for one advertiser
- 48% decrease in wasted ad spend on unsuitable content annually for a brand running 1 billion impressions on the platform through efficiencies gained with IAS
Smarter controls don’t just protect brands, they reduce waste and improve overall media performance.
Access an Omnichannel Look at Media Challenges and Opportunities, According to Experts
The digital video and social media landscape continues to mature, challenging marketers to balance speed with scrutiny and innovation with accountability. With the right tools in place, it’s possible to move fast, see every impression, and ensure your brand is elevated.
To better understand how media experts are thinking about generative AI, CTV, retail media networks, and the future of digital investment, the full picture matters.
