Brand safety meets performance with the power of context

In a digital world where unpredictability is the norm, advertisers face the constant challenge of safeguarding their brand’s reputation from an expanding list of challenges – AI-powered ad fraud, misinformation and MFA sites being the most recent ones.

Social media brings another layer of complexity. With billions of pieces of user generated content daily, even minor adjacency errors can have major consequences.

This is the challenge today and consumers say it out loud: according to research by media quality optimisation leader, Integral Ad Science (IAS), a staggering 71 per cent would feel less favourable toward a brand that advertises near inappropriate content.

So how can advertisers proactively protect their brands while also prioritising cost efficiency and drive brand performance?

Brands must consider what surrounds their message- what it means, how it feels- and to achieve that they must move beyond simple keyword blocking and take a holistic approach to brand safety and suitability and try to understand the context of where their ads appear.

Over reliance on keyword lists can lead to blocking safe and suitable content that brands would want to appear near online and harness scale. For example, the word “shot” might appear on a keyword list to avoid content related to gun violence — but blocking the word “shot” can also avoid safe and suitable content related to basketball, which could be desirable for a sports brand.

Emerging contextual technologies now enable advertisers to interpret content and importantly video content on a deeper level, analysing not just meta data, but semantics, sentiment, and emotion. To meet this challenge, advertisers must go beyond surface-level detection.

Frame-by-frame analysis, for instance, allows more accurate classification of video content on platforms like Meta – detecting up to 24 per cent more unsuitable content than conventional methods.

In one test, it led to a threefold reduction in brand suitability failure rate and a 69 per cent drop in wasted spend — freeing up budget to reinvest in quality environments.

Contextual understanding can lead to major strategic advantages for advertisers.

Proper measurement and verification tell advertisers what happened exactly in terms of brand safety and suitability at the most granular level (e.g. specific URL or a specific Video ID) and feeds actions to take at the planning or campaign execution level to improve performance.

Optimisation is just as important as measurement. While measurement tells advertisers what happened after the bid, optimization ensures quality before it even occurs.

Context control can reduce media waste, as it prevents an ad from serving even after winning the bid, allowing brands to allocate their budget towards brand safe and suitable content that effectively reaches consumers and drives equity, increases campaign performance, and ultimately does not overblock safe publishers, avoiding again wasted spend.

As targeting solutions grow in precision – identifying not just what to avoid but where to lean in – advertising begins to operate with the intelligence and intentionality today’s media environment demands. The future of performance is context-aware, sentiment-smart, and value-aligned. It respects the consumer, safeguards the brand, and elevates the quality of media.

Successful cases vary across verticals and industries, with an auto brand that optimised for context-safe impressions achieving 28 times higher success rates and a 96 per cent reduction in cost per success compared to impressions flagged as unsafe.

In another, a medical research institute found that its safe impressions delivered a 11 times higher performance uplift. These aren’t edge cases- they are examples of how aligning safety, suitability, and performance can drive business outcomes across industries.

A turning point for advertising.

The days of treating safety as an afterthought or brand equity as disconnected from ROI are over. In their place emerges a more holistic vision where strategy is informed by context, driven by relevance, and measured by impact.

For marketers ready to embrace this shift, the reward is not just better campaigns, but stronger brands and more trusted connections with their audience.

By Sofoklis Ioannou, Chief Revenue Officer of Tailwind EMEA, the exclusive partner of Integral Ad Science.