Brand safety requires continuous commitment

Ensuring brand safety is an on-going task that requires real-time contextual understanding, says Hugh Munro from DoubleVerify. (This is an excerpt from a longer Opinion piece. Click "View more" to read the full article.)

Historically, brand safety and verification technology has been treated as a “set it and forget it” exercise. Brands, and their partners, put in a lot of heavy-lifting upfront – creating vast website, app and keyword exclusion lists. Sometimes these lists contain up to tens of thousands of items.

The problem is, while these lists become the default for a brand and generally stay static, the news agenda and media landscape is anything but.

In the news cycle, phrases and words go from obscurity to our daily lexicon in a flash. If someone asked you what “social distancing” meant a year ago, what would you have said?

Brand safety and verification strategies need to adapt to changing contexts and become always-on.