Consumers associate a brand's advertising with the context in which those advertisements are displayed. Because the adjacency of an advertisement to specific types of content can cause significant damage to a brand's consumer reputation and revenue, it is imperative that advertisers have a way to ensure that their ads are not misplaced on digital media properties that contain illegal, objectionable, or even simply irrelevant content.
80 percent of consumers said they would reduce or stop buying a product they regularly purchase if it advertised in a range of hypothetical situations involving extreme or dangerous content.Consumer Perceptions Around Brand Safe Advertising
The mission of the TAG Brand Safety Certified Program is to significantly reduce the risk of the misplacement of advertising on digital media of all types, thereby upholding brand safety and protecting the integrity of digital advertising.
The TAG Brand Safety Certified Program promotes the flow of advertising budgets to participants in digital advertising upholding an industry regulated framework for brand safety. The program serves the entire digital advertising supply chain by providing transparency, choice and control for buyers – enabling them to buy advertising inventory with confidence and creating a brand safety framework for sellers that increases the value of certified sellers' inventory.
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Summary Brand Safety Certified Video
To enable companies to promote a brand-safe environment, the TAG Brand Safety Working Group maintains the Brand Safety Certified Guidelines, which promote the flow of advertising budgets to participants in digital advertising upholding an industry-regulated framework for brand safety and anti-piracy.
Keyword exclusion lists are a core component of most brand safety strategies, but they are also one of the most problematic for publishers. Too often, such exclusion lists encompass not only effective and targeted terms, but also keywords that are overly broad, irrelevant, or outdated. In addition, once added to a list, keywords are rarely removed, even if the term is no longer effective or related to the advertiser’s brand safety strategy.
Keywords are only as effective as the process by which they are selected, reviewed, and updated, yet the digital advertising industry has lacked a standard playbook of best practices for the use of keyword exclusion lists or a practical toolset to manage those efforts.
As part of the Be Bold for Publishers initiative, TAG is introducing the new Keyword Exclusion List Toolset. The industry-collaborated toolset comprises 3 elements:
1. Always Block Keyword List.
Advances in AI can have incredible benefits to Publishers. But, confronted with the nearly unlimited ability to generate synthetic content via Artificial Intelligence, Publishers investing in human created content require help to maintain assurance in the responsibility of their processes, and accountability for their content.
TAG’s Human-Created Content Toolkit helps Publishers and Advertisers distinguish between human-made and AI-generated content.
The toolkit will be launching Q4 2024.
Mobile piracy – or the placement of legitimate ads on mobile sites and apps with infringing content – is an endemic problem needs to be addressed in order to minimize ad-supported piracy revenue flowing to criminals. While app stores are often successful at removing intellectual property-infringing apps, those apps may be downloaded thousands – or even millions – of times before they are removed. Those apps may continue to operate at scale and generate revenue through advertisements, thereby exacerbating the piracy problem.
The Pirate Mobile App List (PMAL) provides brands with a list of mobile apps that were removed from App Stores for infringing on protected intellectual property rights, but may still be active on user's devices and seeking ad spend to monetize pirated content. Through PMAL, TAG empowers brands and their partners to stem the flow of ad revenue to mobile apps with pirated content.
PMAL is part of the Brand Safety Certified program, or TAG members may purchase it separately.
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In 2024, TAG launched “Project Brand Integrity 2.0” (PBI 2.0), a significant expansion of TAG’s proven anti-piracy initiative to defund the criminals who profit from stolen content while protecting advertisers from unintentional exposure to unsafe websites.
As part of that evolution, TAG has created the Pirate Domain Exclusion List (PDEL) - a comprehensive pre-bid exclusion list that automates, expands and accelerates PBI’s process of ad misplacement on pirate sites.
PDEL provides ad tech companies the intelligence required to block ad spend on pirate sites - stopping criminals from monetizing pirate sites in the first place. The PDEL includes real-time intelligence regarding pirate domain threats from TAG’s AdSec Threat Exchange, as well as from dozens of sources of open-source intelligence (OSINT), ensuring brands can be confident that their media investments aren’t spent on IP-infringing sites.
For more information about the Pirate Domain Exclusion List, or to access the tool, please contact us at [email protected].
In partnership with Creative Future, TAG leads Follow the Money, an ongoing effort to reduce the appearances of legitimate advertisements on pirate websites across the U.S. market. As a direct result of this collaboration, brand advertisements no longer appear in the U.S. on pirate sites at volume; representing a 90% decrease in just two years.
Project Brand Integrity (PBI) continues and expands that work to the European markets, helping to protect European brands from association with illegal stolen content by alerting advertisers or their agencies to ads running on pirate sites. Through a partnership between TAG and White Bullet, PBI is able to monitor and document ads on infringing sites, and share information about those ad misplacements with the advertiser or its agency.
By working with advertising agencies to revise their digital media practices, this program has had a significant impact far beyond just those brands contacted, affecting both the advertising ecosystem as a whole and the profitability of ad-supported infringing sites.
Having brand safety parameters and following the industry guidelines to uphold brand safety continually helps advertisers maintain consumer trust and brand integrity in the digital landscape. TAG's brand safety research and whitepapers arms brands, marketers and the adtech community:
1. key trend on brand safety factors that affect consumer purchases.
