What is brand safety and how do you protect it?

Protecting your online reputation will ensure that you acquire and keep the trust of your clients. Brand safety should be a top priority for any business owner or manager. However, many business leaders are still unaware of exactly what brand safety is and why brand safety is crucial in 2023.

What is brand safety?

The online marketplace is growing at an ever-increasing rate. With the growth of e-commerce, consumers now have more power than ever before. Comment sections, blogs and reviews can greatly impact whether or not a product or service is successful. In today’s world, companies need to ensure that their e-reputation is impeccable. To achieve this, your company must focus on its brand reputation strategy.

People tend to leave and remember bad reviews rather than good ones. Fresh drama can rise at any time and without protection, these reviews can crush your reputation and in some cases are impossible to recover from.

A simple brand safety definition is as follows: Brand safety describes any measures that are taken to ensure that a company’s reputation is not harmed because of its advertising online or how it interacts with its customers.

Brand safety involves things like making sure that your advertising does not appear on any pages that are incompatible with your desired image or offensive to your target audience and that your social media pages are free from abusive or offensive behaviour. Brand safety also relates to how a company reacts to negative reviews or comments.

A recent example is the damage Nutella suffered to its reputation due to its poor handling of an online backlash about the company’s use of palm oil. Nutella has been removed from many major supermarket chains and stores because of this incident.

The connection between brand safety and online reputation

Growing an online community and establishing your brand as a trusted entity requires careful management of your online presence. However, as your online community grows, the amount of user-generated content (UGC) also increases.

Generally, UGC is beneficial for growing a brand. For example, user-generated videos on TikTok or YouTube discussing a brand positively have been shown to gather many more views than corporate-produced videos. Unfortunately, there is also another side to UGC. Negative UGC can cause brand safety issues. Offensive content, comments or blog posts can reflect poorly on your brand and harm your brand reputation.

Fraudulent claims, offensive messaging and video content, spam and abusive comments created by users can create a bad buzz around your brand and diminish the trust users have in your company.

Some brand safety statistics

A Reuters article stated that 77% of consumers said that they found viewing a brand’s advertising next to offensive content made them think less of the brand
84% of consumers surveyed by IAB stated that brand advertising that appears on reputable sites, such as news providers, increases their trust in the brand
75% of executives have been involved in an avoidable reputational crisis that damaged their brand
Social media advertising spends are predicted to reach more than $137 billion per year
On average, 75% of brands experience a significant brand safety incident every year

How to protect your brand?

Keeping your band safe from negative UGC or inappropriate ad placements requires developing a dedicated brand reputation strategy. Focusing on brand reputation management is the best way to avoid incidents that can have a negative impact.

There are a few key principles in maintaining brand safety.

Firstly, make sure that you have developed a clear idea of what your brand values are. Define exactly what your brand stands for and consider what types of sites and media you wish to be associated with.
Next, take action to ensure brand safety. A good brand safety technique is to be absolutely sure of what your brand does not wish to stand for or be associated with. Avoid programmatic advertising deals and instead opt for direct deals. This will ensure that you know where your advertising is being placed, rather than letting an algorithm make decisions that could be incorrect.
Thirdly, make sure you monitor all UGC associated with your brand closely. This is particularly important to ensure TikTok brand safety, Facebook brand safety and YouTube brand safety. By partnering with content moderation professionals and employing effective brand safety tools, you can more easily protect your brand from negative UGC

Bodyguard.ai can help you to maintain brand safety across all platforms and build more knowledge on the likes and dislikes of your core audience. Bodyguard.ai has developed an artificial intelligence technology that protects individuals, communities, and brands from toxic online content such as hate, spam, and fraud.

As the only contextual and autonomous moderation solution it automatically identifies and blocks in real-time 90% of toxic content targeting your social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. In combination with human moderators or acting on its own, Bodyguard.ai is highly effective in stopping negative UGC, eliminating toxic behaviour in comment threads, and alerting brands to instances of inappropriate programmatic advertising. In today’s digital world, it is crucial to focus on brand safety in 2023 and beyond.

FAQs on brand safety