Brand Safety and Ad Verification: A New Approach

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The recent exit of Oracle's Moat from the brand safety and ad verification market marks a significant turning point for the digital advertising industry.

For years, the market has been dominated by a trio of players: IAS, DV, and Moat—and a single technological design shared by all three: The underlying technology is designed to eliminate risks in the form of nonhuman traffic, nonviewable ads, and brand-unsafe content.

That approach, in other words, focuses on the negative, emphasizing what content should be avoided rather than what content should be embraced.

With Moat's departure, the market is at a crossroads, presenting an opportunity to rethink and reshape the approach to brand safety and verification.

A Brief History: From Risk Elimination to Stagnation

Early verification methods were reactive, using keyword blocklists and basic algorithms to filter inappropriate content. Though advancements were made to improve accuracy, they were refinements on the same core focus: preventing ads from appearing in harmful places.

That risk-averse strategy has dominated the industry for nearly two decades, resulting in a market where verification is seen as a necessary evil—something that must be done to avoid disaster but not necessarily to drive value.

The focus on minimizing harm has led to a commoditized market where innovation has stalled and differentiation among vendors has diminished.

A Positive Paradigm Shift

The industry's overreliance on negative approaches, such as keyword blocklisting, has reached its zenith. Although those methods are effective at preventing ads from appearing alongside offensive content, they also come with significant drawbacks.

For one, they can be overly broad, resulting in the exclusion of safe and relevant content that could have been valuable to advertisers. Moreover, they often pit advertisers against publishers, leading to tensions and the need for makegoods when ads are blocked inappropriately.

Although founded with the right intentions, this old model has had the unintended consequence of disproportionately penalizing publishers—and posing yet another major challenge for journalism orgs, in particular.

The time is ripe for a positive paradigm shift in how brand safety and verification are approached.

Rather than focusing solely on what is inappropriate or nonhuman—on what is simply "not risky"—the industry must begin to emphasize what is relevant, appropriate, targeted, and effective.

Such a shift requires a more nuanced understanding of content—one that goes beyond simple keyword matching to assess the overall quality and context of an environment.

It also necessitates a closer collaboration between advertisers and publishers, who must work together to ensure that brand safety measures enhance rather than hinder the user experience.

A Collaborative Future: Aligning Advertisers and Publishers

A positive approach to brand safety not only benefits advertisers by providing more relevant and effective placements but also fosters a more collaborative relationship with publishers.

In the traditional model, verification was often a point of leverage for the buy side, and advertisers used brand safety requirements to force concessions from publishers. That adversarial dynamic led to friction and inefficiencies, and publishers bore the brunt of makegoods and other remedial actions when ads were blocked or removed.

In contrast, a positive approach aligns the interests both of advertisers and of publishers.

By focusing on what works—identifying and promoting high-quality content—this collaborative model reduces the need for punitive measures and creates a more harmonious ecosystem: Publishers are incentivized to produce content that meets higher standards, knowing it will be more likely to attract premium advertisers; and advertisers benefit from a more consistent and positive brand presence, free from the disruptions caused by overly aggressive blocklisting.

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The exit of Moat and the resulting duopoly present both a challenge and an opportunity: a chance to rethink and reinvent brand safety for the better.

By shifting from a negative, risk-focused approach to a positive, content-driven model, focused essentially on excellence, the industry can unlock new value and foster stronger, more collaborative relationships between advertisers and publishers.