Brand Safety
Brand Safety is a set of settings and tools that prevent brand advertising from being displayed next to inappropriate content.
Brand Safety - protecting a brand's reputation from association with toxic, illegal or simply irrelevant content. The problem is relevant for programmatic placements in advertising networks (YAN, GDN, DSP), where an ad may appear next to news about an accident, a political scandal or NSFW material.
Protection tools: blacklist sites (blocking specific sites and applications), categorical exclusions (news about tragedies, gambling, alcohol), third-party verification (IAS, DoubleVerify). Yandex Direct and VK Ads have built-in categories of unwanted content - minimum hygiene for any campaign.
In my practice, brand safety is critical for two types of clients: large brands with a cautious PR policy (banks, medicine) and companies working with a children's audience. For small performance campaigns with a budget of up to 200,000 ₽/month, I do not spend time on this beyond the basic settings - the return does not justify the costs.
A separate story is click fraud as a threat to brand safety: click fraud makes statistics junk and can attract unwanted attention to the campaign. They are related, but they are different problems with different security tools.
Frequently asked questions about Brand Safety
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Related terms
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