Programmatic advertising is changing as brands leave cookies behind and focus on context. The shift helps safeguard user privacy. It also makes brand safety a priority, ensuring ads appear in the right context to the right audience. New innovative tools, platforms and strategies can help you promote and protect your brand.
The shift to a cookieless online world and subsequent embrace of first-party-data-based contextual advertising is the latest trend shaping programmatic advertising. It reflects increased consumer and regulatory demands for privacy and transparency. It’s a necessary transition, but it won’t be easy. Adapting to a cookieless world and brand safety are now among the top challenges facing digital marketers, who have long relied on third-party cookies to target, personalize and measure campaigns.
Research by Epsilon shows that 69 per cent of digital advertisers think third-party cookie depreciation will have a bigger impact than the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act. Some 70 per cent believe digital advertising overall will take a step backward.
The concern is understandable. Brands need to ensure their ads appear in the right context to the right target audiences. If ads appear near content that causes harm or users find offensive, the hit to a brand’s reputation may be extremely difficult or even impossible to recover from.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and innovative brand safety tools and strategies are emerging that can help promote and protect programmatic advertising campaigns from damaging content while ensuring suitability.
Contextual advertising relies on first-party data brands already own. It eliminates the need for extensive data collection while protecting user information and privacy. It does this by precisely targeting audiences based on their interests and the content they are interacting with on a web page, app or social channel. This allows marketers to craft ads that reflect the interests and needs of their target audience, reaching them with the right message at a time when they are already engaging with similar content. Contextual ads are 50 per cent more likely to be clicked on than non-contextual ads and have a 30 per cent higher conversion rate than behavioural ads, which are based on a user’s actions before they visit a web page. These actions include links they clicked on, articles they read and other online interactions.
As more online consumers decide not to share their personal data, it becomes harder to effectively target the right audience with behavioural advertising. Not surprisingly, 79 per cent of consumers are more comfortable seeing contextual than behavioural ads and about 80 per cent are more open to seeing ads that do not require their data.
Tip: Design programmatic ad campaigns around specific interests and place them on relevant platforms to achieve a stronger return on investment. For example, programmatic audio is rising alongside the growing popularity of digital audio content, such as news, music, podcasts and books. The benefits of programmatic audio include more precise targeting, context-aware personalized messaging and data-driven insights that combine to make these ad campaigns effective. To maximize their impact, coordinate programmatic audio ads with out-of-home advertising and other channels and formats.
Brand safety and brand suitability measures share the goal of safeguarding brand reputation, but they achieve this goal in distinct ways. Brand safety refers to the strategies and tools that prevent ads from appearing next to inappropriate and harmful content, such as hate speech and misinformation. Because programmatic ads are automated, it is essential that you proactively stop your ads from appearing next to this type of content.
Brand suitability is an extension of brand safety. Where brand safety strategies focus on avoiding the wrong context, brand suitability strategies focus on finding the right environment and context for your ads. The objective is to ensure ads are relevant and aligned with both the content a user is looking at and your brand identity, values and messaging.
Fast fact: A survey of industry experts by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe reports that while 78 per cent of respondents say ensuring brand safety is now a key part of all digital media campaigns, only 47 per cent use both brand safety and brand suitability strategies in their programmatic ad campaigns.
The key benefits of programmatic advertising – automated placements, scale and dynamic content – are also the key challenges to brand safety. Limited human oversight, thousands of ad placement options across different channels and regular updating of content make it harder than ever to ensure your ads appear where they will generate engagement and goodwill. There is a risk they will end up next to content that doesn’t relate to your message. They may land alongside a competitor’s content that will dilute your message. In a worst-case scenario, they might appear near insensitive/harmful content that could damage your brand’s reputation.
Build brand safety and brand suitability measures into your programmatic ad campaigns. Create lists of the domains and keywords you want to block to prevent your programmatic ads from appearing on sites and next to content you want to avoid. For example, a keyword blocking list might include words that have negative connotations, such as extremist, eugenics and dead. Be sure to regularly review and update your blocklists.
To build engagement and credibility, create whitelists of the keywords and domains that include the content and websites where you’d like to see your ads. Leverage tools that use AI and keyword filters to scan and evaluate content and domains to ensure safety, reliability and suitability.
Approaching programmatic advertising with a comprehensive brand safety and brand suitability strategy that focuses on context ensures you are adapting to an increasingly stringent regulatory environment. It also helps you engage your target audience with relevant messaging that safeguards and enhances your brand’s reputation. Be proactive. Leverage AI tools to help you optimize blocklists and whitelists, and make sure your ads show up in the right places next to relevant content that best aligns with your brand identity and objectives.
