Current Issue Summary
Sept 2023 (Vol. 64, Issue 3)

Is Your Brand Protected? Assessing Brand Safety Risks in Digital Campaigns
Brand safety refers to strategies companies use to avoid their ads being associated with negative content on the internet, such as hate speech, nudity and terrorism. In this study, interviews with advertising professionals led by researchers Ross W. Johnson (University of North Texas), Clay Voorhees (University of Alabama) and Farnoosh Khodakarami (San Diego State University) showed that most were worried about their ads appearing next to such negative content. Yet, “all but two companies represented in the sample had adopted some type of mitigation strategy.” More often than not “companies were simply auditing the advertisement placements in more of an ad hoc approach rather than assigning this as a task for an internal or external individual or team,” the authors found. Such a passive approach to brand safety management “could speak to a gap in level of concern and resource availability for monitoring.” Additionally, the authors validated advertisers’ worries through an online experiment, which offered evidence that “brands are at risk when their advertisements are displayed next to negative content and that consumers’ perceptions of brand equity, attitudinal loyalty, and willingness to pay for a brand decrease.” Among the findings:

• “More than 80 percent of advertising professionals agree that brand safety is a major concern for their organizations.
• “Advertising professionals are willing to pay a 50 percent price premium for programmatic platforms that could ensure safe advertising placements.
• “Senior executives are more concerned about brand safety risks and willing to pay more for safe placements than managers and directors tasked with implementing advertising strategy.”

Read the full article here.