At any given time, millions of users are logged in to watch videos on YouTube, making it one of the most powerful tools in the industry for online advertising. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Without protection, you can easily find yourself advertising on content that goes against what you stand for or wasting ad budget on users who aren’t relevant to you.
Brand safety on YouTube: it’s not only about staying out of trouble. It involves making sure every single advertising dollar you’re spending is helping to uphold the very image you’ve labored to so carefully cultivate!
The Monetization of YouTube
YouTube has automatic processes for pairing ads with content relevant to you. These processes can study information such as content metadata, user engagement, and context to decide where to place advertisements. While automation makes scaling possible, it can place advertisements in unexpected locations if not managed.
The advertisements are primarily distributed via Google Ads, in which there are choices for the type of inventories to be used. Standard inventories encompass most forms of content on the site, while expanded inventories encompass a larger range, with the inclusion of content that may not fit the criteria of more tightened security concerns for brands on the site.
Inappropriate Placement of Advertisements
When your ad is positioned alongside controversial, offending, or irrelevant content, it has far-reaching effects beyond embarrassment to the concerned advertiser. Research has indicated consumer negativity towards brands advertising content that has seemed dubious in the past, even if it was not the advertiser’s intention.
In addition to tarnishing the company’s reputation, poorly targeted ad placement can leave you with less budget to work with in the long run. If advertisements are viewed by an uninterested party or mis-targeted viewers, you can expect low engagement and higher prices for each conversion because you’re only getting conversions in areas that don’t even apply to what you’re advertising – you might want to avoid kids content in YouTube ads, for instance.
The situation becomes even more challenging if you take into consideration the amount of content being posted to YouTube on a minute-to-minute basis. There is only so much that can be captured by algorithms before it becomes vital to take proactive steps to control it.
Brand Safety Tools and Approaches
There are various tools on YouTube that help advertisers retain control in advertising. These tools include inventory type selection, which is the advertisers’ first line of defense against improper ad placement on the site.
When choosing limited or standard inventory, advertisers automatically eliminate any content that doesn’t fit specified criteria in terms of being advertiser-friendly.
The content exclusion option gives you the flexibility to exclude content categories such as tragedy, conflict, or sensitive subject matters. While it reduces the pool of eligible users for content sharing, it reduces the likelihood of being positioned alongside undesired content significantly. You can even exclude topics, channels, or videos in case you notice any patterns in the content you would not prefer to associate with in the future.
Apart from the tools available on the YouTube platform, third-party solutions for brand protection can be easily integrated to provide further protection to brands on the site and on the internet in general. The best services include tools such as exclusion lists and real-time monitoring and reporting.
Placement reports are useful tools for optimization on an ongoing basis. You should make it a point to check where your advertisements were served, and you can further optimize settings to exclude any unwanted placements in the future. If there are any channels where performance is terrible or even content is not aligned with expectations, you should exclude them right away.
Protecting Your Investment
Such opportunities in advertising on the YouTube site can only be harnessed with a well-structured approach to brand safety. Awareness on ad placement, the dangers of misplacement, and utilization of the tools on the YouTube site, in addition to external solutions, can help advertisers safeguard brands while extracting the highest possible return on investment!
