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...