{"id":301067,"date":"2020-03-10T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/integralads.com\/insider\/shifting-gears-to-brand-suitability\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T08:37:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T08:37:04","slug":"shifting-gears-to-brand-suitability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/integralads.com\/uk\/insider\/shifting-gears-to-brand-suitability\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting gears to brand suitability"},"content":{"rendered":"

The infamous brand safety concerns of 2017 instigated the \u2018crisis of trust\u2019 and sparked a wider focus on contextual risk. This resulted in more restrictive security measures, and frustration across both publishers and advertisers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our industry needs a major gearshift. It\u2019s time to stop talking solely about avoiding unsafe content and start exploring how ads can be directed towards contextually suitable environments, on quality webpages.<\/p>\n

Hitting the breaks on blocking<\/strong><\/p>\n

The reason why advertisers are focused on upscaling their brand safety efforts is clear. Several studies have drawn a direct line between bad ad placements and harm to brand reputation, as well as consumer relations. The IAS\u00a0Ripple Effect study<\/a>\u00a0found 88% of UK consumers are annoyed by ads appearing in low-quality content environments, with 68% holding brands responsible and 70% ready to stop buying from brands.<\/p>\n

Despite their understanding of advertiser fears, however, the strain of overzealous brand safety tools is hurting publisher revenues \u2013 particularly keyword blocking. Setting potentially harmful terms to avoid may seem like a simple and efficient way of minimizing risk, but it also limits digital media scope; cutting off valuable audiences, wasting perfectly good impressions, and limiting monetization opportunities. Last year alone, blanket exclusion listing cost publishers \u00a3170 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such binary defences aren\u2019t helping the buy or the sell side. To accelerate the brand safety journey, both publishers and advertisers need to adopt a more nuanced approach to assessing inventory suitability.<\/p>\n

Two-way traffic ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as links with poor quality content can destroy consumer trust, ads placed next to the \u2018right\u2019 content have equal power to boost positive impact. The IAS\u00a0Halo Effect study<\/a>\u00a0shows ads seen in high-quality environments are viewed as 74% more likeable and consumer engagement is 20% higher. And that\u2019s what brand suitability is all about.<\/p>\n

Suitability goes beyond the basic brand safety principles by combining security with customization to define what\u2019s best for each brand and allocate budget accordingly. Where blocking tactics rule out any content featuring broad and often outdated terms, such as \u2018New Zealand\u2019 or \u2018London Bridge\u2019, suitability looks deeper. Once brands have set their safety requirements \u2013 threats involving specific types of content covered by standard categories and execution lists \u2013 they can define their acceptable level of risk for certain topics and terms, and use custom analysis to assess every placement.<\/p>\n

For example, evaluating pages referencing New Zealand to uncover their contextual meaning would differentiate between undesirable content linked to prior terrorist incidents and stories covering upcoming rugby games for the All Blacks that could boost perception for a relevant brand, such as Guinness or Air NewZealand. This suitability-centric ad targeting ensures brands stay away from unwanted associations, yet keeps the door open for more diverse impressions from a greater range of quality publishers.<\/p>\n

Presented in the IAB\u2019s freshly launched Content Verification Guide as a new gold standard for advertising, the benefits of suitability aren\u2019t exclusively for brands. By providing granular assessment tools, publishers will no longer be in the dark about what counts as an appropriate placement for specific brands. In fact, they will be able to facilitate the contextual advertising\u00a082%<\/a>\u00a0of media professionals now feel is essential and give brands reassurance they can grow while being protected. In other words, shifting to suitability could finally take the industry forward in its mission to rebuild the triangle of trust between advertisers, publishers and technology providers.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in What’s New in Publishing<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The infamous brand safety concerns of 2017 instigated the \u2018crisis of trust\u2019 and sparked a wider focus on contextual risk. This resulted in more restrictive security measures, and frustration across both publishers and advertisers. Our industry needs a major gearshift….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":301068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,294],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brand-safety-suitability-uk","category-topics-uk"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nShifting gears to brand suitability - Integral Ad Science<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/integralads.com\/uk\/insider\/shifting-gears-to-brand-suitability\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Shifting gears to brand suitability\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The infamous brand safety concerns of 2017 instigated the \u2018crisis of trust\u2019 and sparked a wider focus on contextual risk. 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