In digital advertising, there is the wastage of advertising budget to the extent of 20-25 per cent on account of brand advertising appearing in brand unsuitable environment. A company would not like its ads being spotted next to offensive content. Companies put safeguards while advertising on social media. Media targeting should be focused. One has to be sure where the ads are going and the target audience being catered to. Secondly, it is necessary to use third-party verification tools. These tools ensure that ads are placed in a brand-safe or suitable environment. Thirdly, social media and digital platforms do take certain steps to ensure brand safety and advertisers must understand these. There are manual and automated checks to eliminate unsafe content. There are embedded algorithms to identify key words, pictures and content which are unsafe. This could be blocked.

Sophisticated tools can be used to crawl through the content to eliminate unsafe content. Some platforms allow users to flag off offensive content. Most platforms have backend teams to monitor content and get rid of unsuitable content.

However, despite this, the unsafe content slips through the cracks. There are companies such as DoubleVerify that offer software solution to advertisers for brand safety.

An advertiser’s policy regarding where to be present and where not to be present must be understood and accordingly a list of inclusion-exclusion of sites must be made.

There are firms like Integral Ad Science and mFilterit which provide a suite of products and services that address this issue.