As we know, paid search and banner ads make up the majority of digital marketing spend. When you’re paying for your brand to be placed in front of online consumers, there’s a certain amount of risk you have to take into account based on where that ad is placed and what content it appears beside. While you can block your ad from appearing on webpages featuring certain words by using keyword block lists along with your ad, what do you do when something like an insurrection on the capitol happens and everywhere is flooded with bad news? Many brands simply pulled their ads from appearing anywhere. Which makes sense, but is costly to both the brands advertising (because of the manpower to cancel the ads) and the brands for which depend on the advertising money. In addition to being costly, the reactionary culture that is being created is detrimental to strategy and planning. While I agree you shouldn’t promote your ad for saving money with Honey when the Times is reporting on a national emergency, there must be a better way to create stopgaps to prevent this from happening.
In her article “Brand Safety Shouldn’t Be Reactionary – Advertisers Need To Do Better,” Allison Schiff discusses this phenomenon and refers to a report from IAB in saying that “consumers are 45% more likely to visit a brand’s website if that brand advertises on their favorite news outlets and that advertising in the news can actually increase consumer trust by 6%.” This shows that banner ads, specifically, do what they’re supposed to. How then, can we alleviate the risk involved? In her article, she goes on to discuss the idea of viewing your brand safety as “shades of gray rather than through the lens of a blocklist” and utilizing “brand suitability” when considering the placement of ads. Considering brand suitability in ad placements is a good first step, but what can come next? Are we just forced to continue watching and updating keyword lists in a reactionary fashion? What do you think?
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