Balancing Sustainability and Brand Safety in Programmatic Advertising
Sustainability and brand safety are gaining increasing relevance and discussion within the industry as stakeholders recognize the imperative to align their practices with broader environmental and ethical standards. At leading industry events, top experts are now openly and extensively exploring innovative strategies to support key players like agencies, brands, publishers, and advertising technology providers in navigating these challenges. Today, we want to delve into the evolving discourse around sustainability and brand safety, highlighting the latest insights and best practices from the forefront of programmatic advertising.
Publishers today navigate a landscape filled with both challenges and opportunities. Insights from GeoEdge and Digiday reveal that 76% of publishers report disruptions to user experience due to low-quality ads, impacting up to 66% of their revenue. Despite these challenges, a pathway to transformation exists through the synergy of quality content and advertisements. By prioritizing high-quality, relevant ads that complement their content, publishers can enhance user engagement, encourage repeat visits, and ultimately sustain a loyal audience base. This strategy improves user experience and fosters a trustworthy environment, positioning publishers for long-term success in the competitive world of programmatic advertising.
Carbon Footprint Issue
The programmatic advertising ecosystem generates 2.6 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually. The real issue, however, lies in the inefficiency of these emissions. Depending on the calculation method, 40% to 90% of the carbon emitted serves no purpose for advertisers, representing significant waste. This inefficiency highlights the urgent need for more sustainability in future programmatic chain practices.
In recent years, the marketplace mindset has shifted towards efficiency and the value of each micro-transaction in the programmatic chain. Consequently, the market for sustainable programmatic advertising solutions is growing, presenting opportunities and challenges for advertisers. While the push for sustainability is promising, it is essential to remain vigilant against solutions that are more marketing-focused than genuinely technical, often referred to as greenwashing.
Brands are increasingly scrutinizing the supply chain, probing agencies, and tech suppliers through RFIs. In response, the ad tech community must take greater responsibility by measuring environmental impacts, optimizing supply paths (SPO ), and eliminating MFAs (Made for Advertising sites). Addressing programmatic advertising’s carbon footprint is a technical challenge. Effective solutions must prioritize technological innovations that enhance efficiency and reduce waste. By focusing on authentic, tech-driven strategies, the industry can mitigate its environmental impact while continuing to deliver value to advertisers and consumers alike. Earlier in our blog, we raised the issue of The Carbon Footprint of Programmatic Advertising .
Our team prioritizes strategies to lower our carbon footprint. To achieve this in programmatic advertising, we employ various tactics to enhance efficiency and minimize waste across the advertising supply chain. Some of the most effective approaches include supply path optimization, improved targeting and personalization, reducing ad fraud, efficient ad formats, education, and collaboration (industry standards).
Brand Safety Meaning
Many leading UK brands support the ISBA, an organization committed to enhancing industry transparency and accountability. Brand safety has been a significant area of progress in recent years. Brand protection monitoring became a critical issue in digital marketing around a decade ago. Agencies and brands started to address fundamental questions, such as defining brand safety, what constitutes an appropriate ad placement, and how to create agreements among clients, agencies, and platforms regarding brand safety. The primary focus was on ensuring that brands could purchase high-quality inventory from reputable media outlets.
Around 2018, the discussion shifted towards brand suitability, emphasizing brands proactively blocking potentially controversial placements. During this period, agencies and advertisers often employed keyword blocking too aggressively to maintain brand safety. The marketing industry is transitioning into a new phase of social responsibility, where brands will focus on supporting media outlets that align with their values instead of merely excluding those that do not. Brand safety will increasingly emphasize ethics, values, purpose, and, most importantly, rewarding good practices among publishers. This shift necessitates more in-depth discussions between media owners and brands. Notably, this trend is already becoming evident within the programmatic ecosystem.
The digital marketing industry is transitioning into a new era of social responsibility. In this era, brands will shape their media strategies to support outlets that share their values rather than excluding those that don’t align. The new approach to brand safety safeguards ethics, values, and purpose. Importantly, it will also emphasize rewarding good practices among publishers. Achieving this will necessitate more profound dialogues between media owners and brands, and this shift is already becoming evident, particularly within the programmatic ecosystem.
According to last year’s Oxford economic report, the YouTube creative economy in the EU and the UK was valued at approximately 5.5 billion euros, with the UK alone contributing ￡2 billion. Every minute, about 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube (according to tubefilter.com ). There’s a delicate balance between maintaining an open platform and fulfilling our duty to protect the ecosystem of advertisers, users, and creators. We take this responsibility very seriously. YouTube has implemented various new features and “incredibly robust safeguards” to ensure that advertisers can enjoy a controlled and safe brand experience online. Simultaneously, users can access reliable and trustworthy information, and creators can preserve their freedom of expression.
DecenterAds experts have introduced and are continuously developing a content compliance center for ads to address recent improvements for advertisers that involve collaboration with partners from top traffic scanners. We have also launched a new DSP , where our trusted partners conduct traffic checks. In CTV advertising, brands’ risk of ad fraud is notably high. DecenterAds employ protective measures and indicators in partnership with reliable collaborators to counter this.
The primary cause of many brand safety issues lies in the inefficiency of numerous digital advertising formats. For some formats, a 0.01% click-through rate is deemed successful, necessitating the purchase of millions of placements to achieve substantial results. This often leads to advertising on unfamiliar sites. Adding brand safety technology complicates matters for advertisers and publishers even further. For instance, articles about racism might be wrongly blocked as racist content, resulting in the penalization of unintended targets.
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In today’s world, responsible advertising is more crucial than ever. Brands must navigate the complexities of maintaining their image, meeting consumer expectations, and ensuring positive interactions. Let’s see a key elements of responsible advertising:
Guaranteeing that ads appear in appropriate contexts to safeguard the brand’s reputation.
Minimizing the environmental footprint of digital advertisements to align with consumer expectations.
Developing ads that are relevant, engaging, and non-intrusive to improve interaction with the brand.
Enhance Your Advertising Strategy with DecenterAds
Partnering with DecenterAds means you no longer need to compromise on brand safety, quality, or user experience to achieve scale and performance. Our omnichannel platform stands out in premium, programmatic digital advertising, providing top-tier quality while maintaining exceptional performance. DecenterAds delivers unparalleled transparency and premium ad placements that go beyond what social platforms can offer.