Maybe the fears started after that half-second cowboy twerk in an Applebee’s spot that ran on CNN’s split screen the morning of Feb. 24, 2022.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the perennial problem of brand safety entered a new, more parlous phase. But one incident last year crystalized how difficult marketers and media buyers have it when their messages are placed in an inhospitable ad environment.
It was the morning of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Cable news viewership was atypically higher because of the war. CNN could have cut to a commercial. Or the cable channel simply could have continued its live coverage.
Instead, CNN switched to its “squeezeback” ad format, which features its news program in one video box and advertising in another. The CNN format is designed to keep viewers from switching channels when the network goes to commercial. It’s a promise of ad efficiency by delivering greater viewability.
The backlash was immediate. Applebee’s found itself trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons, as thousands of appalled viewers posted videos of the spot, which featured a dancing cowboy celebrating “a little bit of fried chicken.”
While Applebee’s ad drew the most ire, other brands were engulfed in the stunned social media commentary as well. Picture the sounds and sights of suffering Ukrainians in one section of your TV screen while a Sandals Resorts commercial plays Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”—which includes the lyrics, “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing / Cause every little thing gonna be all right.”
The uproar died down quickly after mea culpas from Applebee’s and CNN, which took down the squeezeback ads throughout the rest of its war reports. But marketers’ indignation and concern have only deepened.
Blame it on continued political division and social tension. Add to that consumer data privacy issues and the rise of the more freewheeling creator economy. And don’t discount the rancor stoked by Elon Musk’s chaotic—and occasionally brand-unfriendly—takeover of Twitter.
If 2022 was the year marketers, agencies and platforms played defense on brand safety and suitability, 2023 is shaping up to be a time when marketers go on the offense. After months of a contracting advertising economy, that’s going to require some hard sacrifices by these same players.
Are they prepared to give up greater ad efficiency, and even some control, for the possibility of more security?
What’s causing brand unsafety?
The heightened concern for brand safety is clear and real, a report from omnichannel ad platform Mediaocean found. In its 2023 Outlook report, released in December, the company asked more than 600 decision-makers from media providers, advertising agencies and tech companies if worries around brand safety and suitability will increase or decrease over the next year. About 40% of respondents surveyed in Q4 said it would rise.
“Marketers are more educated now,” said David Berkowitz, founder of advertising consultancy Serial Marketer. “More education often leads to more anxiety. But it comes in cycles.”
True, the buyers are now more educated about what they should be worried about. And they know what can go wrong when they’re not able to monitor and vet ad placements. The reason is that the technologies have also evolved to obfuscate the ad supply chain, Berkowitz said.
“Still, marketers who’ve been around the business for a couple of decades remember other kinds of brand safety concerns,” he said. “Family-friendly brands, for instance, wanted to prevent their ads from showing up alongside sexually explicit content.”
It’s hard to keep up, certainly. The internet may have been around for the lives of most millennials and all Gen Zers, but it’s still a new medium for established brands and agencies. And the evolution of online environments has outpaced our ability to understand and manage them.
That’s the thesis of Marc Brodherson, senior partner at McKinsey & Co. and his colleague, Adam Broitman, a partner at the consultancy’s consumer internet, media and b-to-b information services group. In particular, the two cite the rapid acceleration of new media formats like connected TV (CTV) for generating a resurgence in brand safety conversations, Brodherson said.
“While the current discussions are fundamentally similar to 2015-17, recent conversations symbolize the blurred lines between linear and nonlinear media,” he told Adweek.
In 2015, brand safety conversations focused on nonlinear, digitally native media, Broitman added. Today, brand marketers are looking across all media channels and formats. On top of that, the conversation has evolved from safety to suitability and contextual advertising, the pair said.
“For example, with brands taking an increasing public stance on various social topics, marketers are increasingly prioritizing media that aligns with core brand values, to ultimately deliver the optimal message via the optimal channel or channels,” Brodherson said.
“The most pronounced driver of the revived brand safety conversation is the widespread availability of CTV inventory, especially in the context of an increasingly programmatic landscape,” said Broitman.
The two cited a report from eMarketer, which found that 9 out of every 10 digital-video dollars will transact programmatically in the years ahead. CTV is fueling this spend.
Marketers realize that it is no longer just social channels or user-generated content that needs to be monitored, Brodherson said.
“While the ongoing importance of influencer marketing is still an essential part of the conversation, the evolving contours of CTV, married with the evolving nature of brand consciousness, make brand suitability in professionally developed content as necessary as brand safety is in social media,” he said.
There are simply too many channels and too many marketing needs that have to be satisfied, said Lou Paskalis, a marketing consultant who has made brand safety a particular cause since he was a senior media executive at Bank of America and through his recent tenure as president of the trade group MMA Global.
Flipping priorities
The demand for a marketing leader to manage ad efficiency—making sure a brand’s messages are placed as widely and deeply as possible for the greatest return and lowest cost—is at odds with keeping those same advertisements away from content that might produce negative attention. Balancing viewability with risk is a constant battle, and it really comes out even.
“There are four kinds [of risk] that are managed below the CEO level,” Paskalis said. “There are operational risks. Do we have the right controls in place? There are compliance risks. Are we compliant with the law? There are employee risks, there are external risks. Those things always have a bit of a fudge factor. You’re never going to be a hundred percent compliant. If you’re 90% compliant, that’s good enough. The fifth one, however, is where you start to see musical chairs at the CEO level. That’s reputational risk.”
Brand safety is often in the eye of the beholder. But when reputation risk occurs at a public company, the damage is shown in quarterly revenue numbers. And the hit is usually shown immediately in the stock price.
No one working in media and marketing wants to create reputational risk for the enterprise, it’s safe to say. But for many marketers, most of the pressure is on ensuring efficient media spend. Managing reputational risk has traditionally been an afterthought—usually when something blows up in a brand’s face.
But Paskalis sees brands taking a more proactive approach to brand safety, simply because the list of threats is rapidly growing. There’s the role of artificial intelligence and data leakage.
“Look, ask any CEO, ‘What’s more important to you—preserving the goodwill and the reputation and the stock price, or getting more efficient media spend?’” Paskalis said. “I guarantee no CEO is going to say, ‘Oh no, I want more media. I’m very risk-happy.’ And so, we’re just now quantifying that. We’re just now pricing that in. Five years from now, that’s going to be the norm.”
What will that norm look like? In addition to more closely monitoring their media placements for safety and suitability, brands are going to have to do better due diligence about the partners and spokespeople they sign up. All marketers are still stung by how Adidas’ once lucrative deal with Kanye West (now known as Ye) turned ruinous, resulting in a $246 million hit after the star’s escalating outbursts of antisemitism.
“Marketers will consider whether a partner reflects their values,” Paskalis said. “Number two, marketers are going to ask themselves if they’re protecting their customers’ data choices, their customers’ privacy and consent. Number three, ‘Do we have good quality inventory?’ Number four, ‘Is there transparency around their data practices and their machine learning?’ Finally, number five on that list: ‘Do I get good return?’ The model, brands’ priorities, are going to be flipped.”
But to do that, marketing is going to have to give up control.
‘Fox minding the henhouse’
In Paskalis’ view, marketers can’t be expected to set those new priorities. The temptation to maximize return on ad spend is too great. He suggested placing responsibility for establishing a “standards checklist” outside of the marketing unit.
The safety and values standards function would resemble the procurement departments that were set up to control marketing expenditures by major brands 20 years ago.
“It’s a fox minding the henhouse issue,” Paskalis said. “Someone should set standards for me just like they do in every other aspect of the business that I need to adhere to. Major Fortune 500 companies have procurement functions, which are hated, but give us something very leverageable as media buyers.”
A brand safety toolkit
In much the same way procurement policies and governance provides clarity between brands and media buyers, a standards function can do the same.
“It’s not to say you can’t do business with people that perhaps have different values than your own,” Paskalis said. “That’s not the point. You need to have a map and say, ‘Look, here’s the risk we’ve accepted.’”
McKinsey’s Brodherson also advised brands to create a formal process for managing brand safety and risk. A toolkit might fit the bill marketers need. But it requires definition, syndication and implementation.
“The first step is for brands to define safety and suitability standards,” Brodherson said. “These standards should build on core safety standards to include brand suitability. Brands should then syndicate standards with media partners and technology vendors to ensure transparency around expectations.”
Brand safety technologies are not new, he noted, but to ensure brand suitability guidelines are adhered to, an operating model that includes internal stakeholders and agency partners will be critical for operations alongside technology.
“There are some obvious controls to be part of a brand’s toolkit,” Serial Marketer’s Berkowitz said. “But brands also need to determine what it’s worth for them. There are sell-side and buy-side verification technologies, for instance. And there are premium brand-safe media networks that can ensure ads are placed alongside safe content and are seen by real humans. This can often lead to higher returns, but there are usually added costs involved—including costs of training their teams and their agencies.”
In the end, said Berkowitz, the biggest question for any brand or buyer to ask is: What is brand safety worth to us?
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