It's a dangerous digital world out there today for brands, and marketers and advertisers cannot afford to put consumer trust at risk. The benefits of programmatic ads -- digital ads purchased automatically -- such as cost-effectiveness, ease-of-use and scalability, are being undercut by their shortcomings: lack of control and transparency in placement, unclear returns and, most worrying, ad association with some pretty unsavory corners of the internet. Marketers must always be on the lookout for where and how brand assets are being used, and should devote the necessary resources to it. Instead, marketers should reassert control over their brand assets, shifting it away from third parties. At any given time, a brand should be able to locate, promote, or remove brand assets, including, and especially, advertisements. Asset control is non-negotiable. Do you remember the game Telephone from childhood? Middlemen like third-party data providers and social platforms have become large players in the dynamics between brands and their consumers. User-generated content (UGC) is invaluable, as consumer trust is higher when content comes from other consumers. The fact is, it's a dangerous digital world out there today for brands, and marketers and advertisers cannot afford to put consumer trust at risk.
It’s a dangerous digital world out there today for brands, and marketers and advertisers cannot afford to put consumer trust at risk.
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When it comes to brand safety, 75 percent of brands say they have experienced at least one brand-unsafe incident in the last year alone. It’s an especially staggering number when you consider the resources that are poured into building and promoting a brand. Unilever, for example, one of the world’s most recognizable brands with the second-largest marketing budget around, spent nearly $8 billion on marketing efforts in 2016.
Related: Don’t Let Alexa or Siri Speak for Your Company: Protecting Your Brand’s Voice on AI Platforms
But, despite the amount of time and money companies devote to growing their brand, few are taking the same precautions to protect their brand. And the ones that do, aren’t doing it particularly well. Even heavy-hitters, such as JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson, Cisco and Lyft, have had brand safety scraps that resulted in full strategy shifts. JPMorgan Chase went from advertising on 400,000 sites a month to just 5,000after discovering its ads were running alongside extremist content. In another instance, P&G shrunk digital ad spending by $140 million because of brand safety concerns.
Given how much change has taken place in marketing, advertising and digital technology in the span of only a few decades, it’s not entirely surprising that companies have yet to catch up. Advertising has expanded from being dominated by print ads, television, and radio commercials — entirely brand-owned, monodirectional communication tools — to include interactive consumer engagement tools and digital ads, whose distribution is outsourced to third parties. On the one hand, digital automation has made blanketing every corner of the internet as easy as clicking a few buttons, lowering the cost and broadened the scope of brand outreach. On the other hand, it has taken control out of the hands of companies, leaving their brands vulnerable. Which is why if brands are going to survive in today’s digital marketing and advertising world, it’s imperative they keep the following in mind:
Brand safety is a 24/7 job.
The benefits of programmatic ads — digital ads purchased automatically — such as cost-effectiveness, ease-of-use and scalability, are being undercut by their shortcomings: lack of control and transparency in placement, unclear returns and, most worrying, ad association with some pretty unsavory corners of…
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