2018 resolutions around brand safety and programmatic

As we head into 2018, marketers expect maturity from programmatic, particularly in ensuring brand safety with advertiser-friendly guidelines and policies for publishers. Advertisers need assurance that publishers provide an advertiser-friendly space free of adult content, copyright infringement and any condoning of violence or illegal activity.

We asked a series of leaders to share the priorities for the health of the ecosystem in 2018.

Enforcing viewability and ad-quality standards

Like many platforms, Oath, the digital content subsidiary of Verizon Communications and umbrella for AOL and Yahoo, aspires to position itself as a champion for brand safety, fraud prevention, and enhanced measurement. It plans on making this a reality by working with industry-leading third-party verification companies to enforce viewability and ad quality standards.

"Brand safety has never been a more important topic for our industry," said Rico Chan, managing director for Oath in Hong Kong. "At Oath, we are committed to a safe and transparent supply chain for our advertisers and publishers. We do this by focusing on transparency and advocating for an open ecosystem, outside of walled gardens."

The company plans to work with industry groups to invest in and implement best practices as well as the latest technologies to protect brands.

Independent verification and trusted partnerships

On the adtech side, Criteo’s Commerce Marketing Ecosystem will partner with retailers, brands, and publishers to balance shopper privacy, client data protection, and brand safety in a trusted, transparent, and fair environment, according to the company.

"We are committed to an environment that protects the brand integrity of our clients and therefore have in place a robust and stringent blacklist process that enforces our brand safety guidelines, which our partners must adhere to and comply with at all times," said Huang Hanming, the managing director of South Asia and Greater China at Criteo. "We continuously review our guidelines to uphold the highest standards and to ensure that no sites in our network are operating in violation."

For digital advertising, this means trusted partnerships, independent verification, industry oversight and models of attribution and measurement that work for the various players in the ecosystem and account for an increasingly sophisticated multi-touch and the cross-device world.

Premium private marketplaces

A truly controlled publisher marketplace, such as that of Publicis and CtrlShift, assures advertisers and agencies that manual human oversight played a detailed role in selecting publisher partners. The private marketplace introduced by CtrlShift in 2017 will be its primary brand safety offering of 2018, with various measures in place to ensure content is advertiser-friendly.

"Greater trust, transparency, and control over reaching the right audiences is key and can be achieved via smart solutions such as CtrlShift's premium private marketplace, AMP and intelligent media management technologies like The Hub," said Reza Behnam, the co-founder and executive chairman of CtrlShift. "It’s time for brands to take back control and have a defragmented connection with their audiences.”