{"id":117428,"date":"2017-04-05T23:44:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/truth-advertising-four-strategies-protect-brands-from-poor-content-alignment\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T05:50:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:50:03","slug":"truth-advertising-four-strategies-protect-brands-from-poor-content-alignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/creative\/truth-advertising-four-strategies-protect-brands-from-poor-content-alignment\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth in Advertising: 4 strategies to protect brands from poor content alignment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fake news. X-rated content. Breitbart. Clickbait. If you\u2019re a digital marketer, these terms are part of your everyday lingo by now. Content alignment\u2014working to ensure brand advertising is adjacent to \u201cgood\u201d content\u2014has always been a part of the digital media conversation, but the 2016 United States election really brought it to a head. With the intense focus on the candidates and their platforms, many media outlets came under fire for either promoting, or allowing sites to promote, \u201cfake\u201d news or other incendiary, highly-polarizing editorial content. This type of content is essentially clickbait\u2014content created to attract attention and drive traffic to a web page<\/a>, often relying on hyperbole or sensationalist headlines and pictures to accomplish the goal.<\/p>\n

This sparked a backlash in the digital media buying industry as well, when some advertisers\u2019 ads unfortunately appeared on sites or next to this content\u2014at odds with their core brand values. This didn\u2019t happen because of malicious intent or purposeful planning to buy those spots, but because the digital advertising inventory universe is vast, and buying methodologies vary in such a way that not every media impression purchased can be tracked back to its exact placement. Facebook\u2014the behemoth itself\u2014was one of the hardest hit platforms and in response has created new algorithms specifically to address the issue.\u00a0Google, too, has been dealt a blow because of this issue, with major advertisers pulling out of Google and YouTube buys entirely due to concerns about the content.<\/p>\n

Due to the subjective nature of what \u201cbad\u201d or \u201cfake\u201d content looks like and the speed at which it can be produced on new and different sites, no reputable agencies, media networks or publishers will be able to guarantee with 100% certainty that they will never show an ad near this type of content (not even Facebook can say that).\u00a0There are, however, many steps that advertisers can take to help prevent their ads from showing up alongside unwanted content. Here are our top four tactics.<\/p>\n

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  1. Create and maintain\/update a master \u201cblacklist\u201d of known sites that we do not want ads to appear on. Ensure this blacklist is in place for every buy.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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    1. When applicable, such as when advertising on the Google Display Network, we may\u00a0also exclude sites and content based on category-level exclusions, such as:\n
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      • Crime, police, and emergency: Police blotters, news stories on fires, emergency services resources, etc.<\/li>\n
      • Death and tragedy: Obituaries, bereavement services, accounts of natural disasters, accidents, etc.<\/li>\n
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