Brand safety and brand suitability - why it matters and how we deliver it

In today’s fragmented digital advertising ecosystem, the environment in which an ad appears is just as important as the audience it reaches. Across industry surveys and market research reports, advertisers consistently name brand safety as one of their biggest concerns when investing in digital media.

This recurring prioritisation reflects a simple reality: when ads appear next to harmful, offensive, or inappropriate content, the impact goes beyond short-term performance. It can damage brand reputation, erode consumer trust, create negative PR exposure, and ultimately reduce return on investment.

For advertisers, ensuring controlled, high-quality environments is therefore not optional, it is a prerequisite for sustainable digital investment.

1. Strict supply onboarding
    

Brand safety begins at activation. Every new publisher, and every new inventory source from existing partners, must pass a structured onboarding process led by our Media Quality Team.

This includes:

• Editorial review of content categories
• Validation of publisher legitimacy
• Technical checks (ads.txt / app-ads.txt, supply chain transparency)
• Pre-activation traffic and quality assessments
   

2. Independent verification and continuous control
    

We complement internal governance with third-party verification technologies, including DoubleVerify (DV), Integral Ad Science (IAS), and Pixalate.

These solutions provide:

• Pre-bid blocking of unsafe environments
• Real-time content classification and risk scoring
• Post-bid measurement and ongoing monitoring

For example, we apply a DV brand safety floor that prevents delivery on content classified as potentially unsafe.

Together, onboarding and verification create a multi-layered protection framework.

Brand Safety refers to standardised protections designed to prevent ads from being served alongside content widely recognized as inappropriate or harmful. These include environments such as extreme violence, hate speech, illegal activities, or explicit adult material, contexts most brands would universally avoid. Brand safety sets a baseline level of risk tolerance and answers the fundamental question: “Is this content safe for my brand to be associated with?”

By contrast, Brand Suitability allows advertisers to refine where their ads appear based on contextual relevance and strategic preferences. Whereas safety filters out universally unsafe environments, suitability enables brands to opt into or exclude specific content categories based on campaign goals and brand values (e.g., avoiding hard news, excluding specific sub-topics, or targeting premium lifestyle categories). Suitability therefore builds on safety by aligning inventory with an advertiser’s brand strategy and messaging objectives.

Beyond baseline safety, we enable advertisers to align delivery with brand strategy.

Using contextual targeting capabilities, particularly via DoubleVerify, we allow advertisers to:

• Include selected content categories
• Exclude sensitive or undesired topics
• Customize suitability settings per campaign

This ensures campaigns are not only safe, but contextually aligned with brand values and objectives.

Brand safety provides essential protection.
Brand suitability enables strategic precision.

Through strict onboarding, independent verification, and flexible contextual controls, we deliver digital video inventory that is both protected and purposefully aligned with advertiser requirements.