Industry Discussion| Author: Benjamin Rehberg, Teads
Brand Suitability
Brand safety in the marketing ecosystem has never been a more pressing topic than other social issues in today’s current climate. Traditionally, brand safety is the practice of removing inappropriate or harmful content to create brand-safe environments. With the increasing browsing time of online consumers, more placements of advertisements next to inappropriate content has been on the rise.
Brand suitability, evolving from the concept of brand safety, has been taken into account lately and has become an emerging trend and emphasis among brands and agencies. Cutting through the clutter of technobabble is essential to understand, gain perspective and more importantly, to test and learn new marketing tactics and technologies. We will start this journey by providing simple clear definitions of brand safety and brand suitability.
Brand Safety -vs- Suitability:
Brand Safety is designed to help brands avoid content and environments that platforms, agencies and advertisers universally agree are harmful for society and unfit for monetisation, so should be blocked. For example, content that contains hate speech directed at a protected class, or content that promotes or glamorizes the consumption of illegal drugs. The 4A Advertiser Protection Bureau’s Brand Safety Floor Framework identifies 13 content categories that pose risk to advertisers.
Main Concepts Part 1
Why is Brand Suitability Important ?
Brand Suitability is designed to help brands avoid content and environments which, while brand safe, may not be appropriate for them based on their unique goals, image, sensitivities and values, their customer base and even language. What may be suitable for one brand may not be appropriate for another brand.
Brand Suitability solutions can either:
a) help a brand to avoid content that is specifically inappropriate for its unique sensitivities and values but may be appropriate for another brand, or
b) allow content that is aligned with a brand based on its context, sentiment, tone, creative messaging, and other qualifying factors.
The 4A Advertiser Protection Bureau’s Brand Suitability Framework details different classes of content within each of the 13 categories and assigns risk levels that advertisers can use to determine their own suitability for content, understanding that not all advertisers will have the same view of the risks posed to their brand.
The digital world has never been more integrated into our daily lives as it is today. We are constantly consuming, engaging and relying on more digital content than ever before. Interestingly based on the TAG/BSI Consumer Brand Safety Survey, consumers are becoming more net-savvy and craving respectful, trustworthy, relevant, and more curated online video experiences, not to mention that the foundations of targeting methodologies and privacy regulations are shifting globally.
Therefore, it is time for brands to take a step forward to forensically review their brand suitability by scrutinizing the environment, content and even sentiment to ensure their digital campaigns align and reflect positively with their brand values.
Besides, leveraging brand suitability not only provides a curated brand environment, it provides an opportunity for the whole industry to have better control of the performance and efficiency of the marketing investment. This all combines to reduce wastage from misaligned content and driving brand recall. A study conducted by the Channel Factory & the University of Southern California reported that contextually aligned ads can help deliver a 93% increase in brand recall.
During our latest IAB SEA+India Data and Attribution Council discussion, Brand Suitability was a hot topic across a diverse audience of brands, publishers and agency practitioners. There is clearly a demand for a brand suitability strategy to be included as a fundamental part of a brand’s digital strategy.
One of the biggest challenges we have today is a lack of knowledge, best practices, definitions of suitability and ultimately partners that can help brands navigate these brand suitability offerings.
With this in mind we would like to share a few suggestions on brand suitability:
- Think inclusion not just exclusion. Determine the type of content that makes the most sense for your brand
- Think about your brand values and what type of content may not make sense for you. Understand the types of content that you would consider suitable versus those you would not.
- Tailor a brand suitability strategy to your markets by taking local language, cultural nuance, and local laws into consideration.
Main Concepts Part 2
Why is Brand Suitability Difficult?
During the heated discussion of the relevancy of brand suitability, the IAB SEA+India Data and Attribution Council members consider programmatic and social at the forefront. Meanwhile, we predict that the demand for brand risk assessments will continue to increase as contextual targeting experiences a renaissance.
However, agreeing on a definition and scope of brand suitability proved difficult. This is unsurprising considering the different requirements of various brands and the many differences in national laws around the world.
The council found the lack of globally accepted industry-wide brand safety standards, as defined by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), to be the main reason why the lines between brand safety and brand suitability remain blurred.
Instead, brands and agencies need to define what’s suitable and what isn’t. It is noteworthy that such an assessment inherently involves corporate social responsibility, because defining unsuitable content, wittingly or unwittingly, follows ethical, value-based decision-making about what’s positive and good for the brand in media buying as well as for society.
Conclusion
What are the Best Approaches to Embrace Brand Suitability?
As one council member put it, brands have good reason to optimise their campaigns through contextual alignment and exclusions. On the one hand caution is crucial – one survey in the UK found that 85% of consumers would boycott their favorite brands if ads appeared near COVID 19 conspiracies.
On the other hand, many brands are taking their risk aversion further than their audiences would like them to in their effort to create positive ad experiences. Even today, most stories on LGBTQ websites remain flagged as unsafe and excluded from monetisation.
As mentioned previously, advertisers should always think of inclusion but not just exclusion, and advertisers ought to apply just as much caution to not failing their consumers’ values as they dedicate to brand safety.
Case Study of Nike’s Controversial Campaigns
We reviewed Nike‘s Dream Crazy campaign featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a prominent example of a brand leading the way to reflect its audiences’ values in their approach to brand suitability. The lifestyle brand embraced the sensitive, but highly relevant topic of Black Lives Matter, which was met with creative and commercial acclaim. Relevant arguments were made that the strategy was not only chosen because it’s the right thing to do, but because it allowed Nike to better market to their audience.
A similar Nike campaign in Japan that highlighted racial discrimination faced by schoolgirls, which was fiercely debated in the country, showed that value-based brand suitability also entails promoting said values with all their benefits and drawbacks. However, a potentially polarizing approach will not suit every brand.
So how far should you take brand suitability to make your ads more meaningful and memorable?
Advertisers and marketers who want to address these questions will do well to complement brand suitability with brand responsibility around pillars such as respect for the user and sensitive targeting.
While not all markets and brands are equally positioned to embrace brand responsibility, the demand for Responsible Advertising is growing in an industry that seeks to address various topics from Diversity and Inclusion, to sustainability.
In a recent example, GroupM CEO Christian Juhl announced the agency will recommend brands pull spend from publishers and platforms that do not decarbonise.
In conclusion, brand suitability is one side of a coin, with brand responsibility on the other side. Developing guidelines for both will allow brands to live-up to their consumers’ expectations, while asserting their values for lasting industry and societal change.