The Digital Advertising Industry Makes Gains in Resolving Brand Safety Concerns

The growing popularity of programmatic ad buying comes with many benefits for brands and their advertising partners, including increased efficiency and easier access to a large audience. But it hasn’t been without its downsides, mostly because brand safety has become a rising concern for many major brands.

Over the past few years, some major brands have found themselves in hot water when their ads inadvertently ended up next to questionable or objectionable content. This can have a hugely detrimental effect on brand perception, as unfortunate placements can make the advertiser seem tone-deaf or as if they are promoting something highly controversial. According to eMarketer, at least three-quarters of U.S. marketers have dealt with brand safety issues before.

This problem has not gone unheeded. InMobi and IAS are committed to making brand safety issues a thing of the past. In March, IAS launched its innovative in-app brand safety solution, which allows advertisers to filter their media directly within their DSP of choice when buying programmatically.

This new solution categorizes an app as either brand safe or as part of a potentially risky category (including adult content, alcohol, gambling, illegal downloads, illicit substances/drugs, offensive language, violence, etc.). IAS built this solution specifically for in app environments. After all, an app that is brand safe on the surface (particularly violent gaming apps and dating apps, etc.) could lead to potentially dicey situations for advertisers.

“With brand safety as a growing concern for major marketers looking to advertise programmatically, we are excited to work with IAS in-app brand safety on a post-bid verification perspective. InMobi is committed to partnering with leading, independent measurement companies like IAS in order to provide greater transparency and controls to brand advertisers,” said Anne Frisbie, SVP of Global Programmatic and Brand for InMobi.

IAS’s pre-bid in-app targeting solution has opened up InMobi’s inventory to brands without risk. In one campaign that a major Fortune 500 company leveraged IAS pre-bid in-app brand safety targeting through their demand-side partner, we were able to measure and verify brand safety across InMobi inventory. This allowed them to run their ads with total confidence, as they knew with certainty that their ads were running only in brand-safe environments.

“Brand safety is a priority for all UM clients and something that we actively work on monitoring. We were happy to see InMobi integrated with buy side (DSPs) and measurement technologies (IAS), which, further extends our ability to measure and verify media within the mobile app environments,” said Alex Andreyev, VP, Partner at UM, part of IPG Mediabrands.

“Programmatic offers advertisers powerful opportunities to make the most of their digital dollars. For many years, supply-side partners have been challenged to meet these needs. By offering pre-bid mobile in-app segments to our customers via their DSP, we’ve opened up their ability to control performance. Additionally, key partnerships with supply-side partners like InMobi allow brands to monitor their performance and ensure that our pre-bid targeting solutions are delivering results,” said Harmon Lyons, SVP Global Business Development, IAS.