How customization, control and accountability are reshaping the way advertisers think about context

"The discussion around brand safety and suitability has matured. The first phase focused almost entirely on safety: avoiding harmful or illegal content. That defensive posture was necessary but limited. The second phase shifted to suitability, which is about contextual relevance. The industry is now entering a third phase, where brands expect more control, more extensibility into walled gardens and closer accountability to outcomes."

"Platform policies and industry frameworks provide a baseline, but they are too broad to capture the needs of individual advertisers. When brands rely solely on these third-party definitions, the result is often underblocking and overblocking. Campaigns can end up excluding valuable and relevant environments while still running against content that does not align with brand values. That outcome hurts both advertisers, who miss opportunities, and publishers, who lose access to spend based on a misclassification of their content."

Brand safety evolved from a defensive focus on avoiding harmful or illegal content to suitability centered on contextual relevance. The industry is entering a phase where brands demand greater control, extensibility into walled gardens, and closer accountability to outcomes. Platform policies and industry frameworks provide a baseline but are too broad to capture individual advertiser needs, causing underblocking and overblocking. Underblocking and overblocking exclude valuable environments while allowing content that misaligns with brand values, hurting advertisers and publishers. Suitability varies by product, audience, and geography, so brands must set different thresholds and refine parameters over time. Research from Annalect and Channel Factory showed campaigns built with brand-defined suitability achieved almost six times the return on ad spend on YouTube and outperformed general online video campaigns by up to 80%.

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