A view from Martin Vinter, Head of Media, on Brand Safety, has been featured on Mediatel.

In this article, Martin highlights that YouTube is a platform offering brands a great space to advertise, but due to the very nature of user generated content – and technology deciding how and where to serve advertising – that comes with the risk of being associated with racists, terrorists and paedophiles.

Martin emphasized that while it’s true that its figure of detection will never remove 100 per cent of illegal content, as disclosed earlier this month, it misses the point. Not all (deemed) brand-unsafe environments are illegal. Brand preference is also a factor on the spectrum of ‘brand fraud’ at one end and ‘brand environment and association’ at the other.

Martin advises that rather than pulling spend every time these brand safety stories come to light, advertisers may want to go through a process of risk management – as many advertisers already do. But no amount of crystal balls will help answer the fundamental questions brands have, and that is why we are where we are – divesting partly or fully, controlling the investment and placements tighter, are the general outcomes for serious advertisers who understand the worth of their brand.

To read the article in full on Mediatel, please click here.

First featured on 20/03/2019