Brand safety: the only way is up

Brian Carruthers

Brand safety, which in its broad sense includes digital ads appearing in the wrong context and digital ad fraud, has made the headlines but brands remain curiously reluctant to act.

A year on from the front-page story in The Times that pushed brand safety into the spotlight –when ads were revealed to be appearing alongside extremist content – it feels as though not a great deal has changed. Brand safety in its broadest sense – including digital ads appearing in the wrong context and digital fraud – represents a huge waste of advertising money, but rather than address the issues many advertisers seem prepared to accept these as a cost of business, the Brand Safety Summit (London, March 2018) heard.

“We found lots of advertisers paid for fraudulent impressions, even...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands