In current times, with a steep dependency on the internet to spread messages relating to the brand’s visibility, it becomes much more important to protect a brand from reputation damage. According to a recent survey, 60% of advertisers and agencies consider brand safety their top concern. Thus, brand protection is a set of strategies to save a brand’s identity, image, and value from misleading associations, inappropriate ad placements, and counterfeit activity.
According to mFilterIt reports, for all ad campaigns run on YouTube, the web and other streaming platforms, about 7-13% of them are placed on brand-unsafe content with a minimum level of contextuality. With the proper applications of AI-based tools, contextual placements can be improved to deliver an ROI boost of 15-20%.
What Is Brand Protection?
Brand protection is the safeguarding of a company’s brand against any wrongful representation. This wrongful representation often results from outside threats or improper advertising practices. This is done by ensuring that the ads appear in appropriate and safe environments.
Brand Safety
Brand safety is concerned with preventing the appearance of an advertiser’s ads in a context that may harm the reputation of the brand. Programmatic advertising is a Blackbox that often places ads on inappropriate websites and in an unsafe environment.
Brand Relevancy & Contextuality
Brand relevancy means that when ads are run, they must be shown to relevant audiences, consistently maintaining the brand’s identity with its target audience and the advertising channels it utilizes.
Benefits of Brand Protection
Brand Safety
- Prevent association with harmful content- With a robust brand safety strategy, your brand will never associate with harmful or controversial content that can harm your brand.
- Increase consumer trust- Customers trust a brand when they see the brand in safe and appropriate contexts to befriend their long-term loyalty.
- Enhances ROI – By avoiding unsafe placements, you reduce wasted ad spent on content that won’t drive results or may even have a negative impact.
Brand Relevancy & Contextuality
- Boosts engagement- Placing ads in contexts relevant to your target audience will make them more engaging and convert much better.
- Improves customer experience- Contextually relevant ads will make the user experience far more streamlined and positive for customers because they’re encountering your brand in meaningful contexts.
- Enhances Market Positioning – It strengthens your market positioning since your brand stays relevant to current trends and consumer preferences.
- Improves advertisement effectiveness – In the right context and position, ads have a better chance of striking attention and evoking action, thus making the entire campaign effective.
Case Study
A prominent retail FMCG brand encountered challenges in effectively targeting their advertisements on YouTube and the web. The brand thereafter collaborated with mFilterIt to take stock of the situation by doing a brand safety audit and implementing strategies thereafter to enhance their visibility, safety and contextual relevancy.
Upon the collaboration between the brand and mFilterIt, the brand experienced a major dip in unsafe placements from 16% to 4.5% in 1 month which came down to 0.5% in 6 months. There was an enhancement of 12% in contextual ad placements.
Conclusion
Brand protection is important for businesses to remain identifiable and competitive. For companies to protect and raise brand equity they should focus on brand safety and brand relevance. This paper discusses the implications of further development of brand protection strategies. Consumer trust increases with an effective brand protection policy, ads have a more positive impact, and the company has a better competitive status. As shown in the case study, solutions provided by us can significantly elevate both brand safety and relevancy, resulting in better ad performance and a stronger overall brand presence.
