2 December 2024
Last modified: 22 March, 2022
Brand safety is an overall term for a variety of measures/controls designed to safeguard a brand’s image, reputation, and values when advertising online.
With many ad buying processes now automated, various brand safety measures/controls can be integrated into these processes to give brands the reassurance that their ads will not be delivered to pages containing undesirable or inappropriate content. Including measures/controls such as exclusion lists, viewability, ad fraud, and ad verification, brand safety is backed by a set of industry standards and benchmarks. The IAB Tech Lab identifies the following brand safety categories as “sensitive topics”:
- Adult & Explicit Sexual Content
- Arms & Ammunition
- Crime & Harmful Acts to Individuals and Society and Human Right Violations
- Death, Injury, or Military Conflict
- Online Piracy
- Hate Speech & Acts of Aggression
- Obscenity and Profanity
- Illegal Drugs/Tobacco/E-Cigarettes/Vaping/Alcohol
- Spam or Harmful Content
- Terrorism
- Sensitive Social Issues
This standardises the process of vendors and publishers categorising their content so that advertisers can decide whether it is brand safe for their advertisements.