With the ad fraud economy now named one of the biggest markets for organized crime worth a staggering $50 billion, tech companies mFilterIt, Techarc, and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) have united to launch the 2021 Brand Safety Report to help brands and companies protect themselves from the rising evils of the digital landscape.

With the global digital advertising and marketing ecosystem set to become a $646 billion economy by 2024, coupled with the growing rise in ad fraud, brands need to be aware of the complex challenges of brand safety issues online. To help brands with this, the 2021 Brand Safety Report reveals current understanding and perceptions about brand safety and how some of the leading brands across major industries are implementing best practices to protect their brands.

Highlights from the report include:  

  • Very few brand custodians are taking brand safety seriously, with nine out of ten CMOs astonished with the results after carrying out an external brand safety audit through external partners. The limited awareness isn’t allowing CMOs to see the short or long-term impact of brand safety challenges.
  • The present brand safety guidelines are not aligned with the changing business needs where digital takes center stage. Brands are required to revisit their guidelines and take a digital-first approach.
  • The onus of brand safety is ultimately on the brands, not with third-party agencies.
  • The standard brand safety configurations available with the advertising platforms are not enough to achieve the desired goals and objectives. Brands must leverage specialized tools and solutions for brand safety for tangible outcomes.
  • Brand infringement is increasingly becoming a gateway to brand safety issues. Brands cannot ignore brand infringement challenges which are posing serious threats around integrity and trustworthiness.
  • Brand custodians must adopt the best practices to proactively embrace brand safety and strengthen the brand by getting rid of the harmful issues which can result in irreversible damages.

Amit Relan, Co-Founder of mFilterIt, said in a statement, “Fear leads to more fear, and trust leads to more trust and in today’s time of uncertainty, trust is the only silver lining to bank upon. Your customer’s trust in you, their trust in your brand. Brands, including their partners who are responsible for their digital presence, need to take a proactive stance and create a trustworthy and safe environment by ensuring they are not put on the wrong side and associate with something that harms their integrity.”

Chief Analyst and Founder of Techarc Faisal Kawoosa said, “Brand safety is at an inflection point as the world opens for transparency and trustworthiness in the digital world. With digital commerce becoming mainstream and D2C the preferred channel for several business categories, brands need to be certain about the message and mediums they are getting represented through along with the genuine impact that’s getting created.”

Bala Subramaniam, Head – Omnichannel Max Fashion at Landmark Group, said, “In the last two years, the digital ecosystem has seen a massive surge. While this has created a wide array of opportunities, it also has given rise to activities that can be quite brand damaging. From social profile impersonation to fake websites, brand safety issues are growing and becoming quite complex in nature. Brands have to be vigilant and work with partners that can help safeguard the brands. Investing in brand safety tools, technologies, and partners should be a top of the list item for all brand custodians.”

The report shares eye-opening industry findings, expert advice, and key pointers to what brands should be looking out to stay safe online around key topics, such as:

  • Adverts can unintentionally pop up next to inappropriate content such as fake news, terrorism, and adult content. This can harm the brand’s reputation and have a larger impact on their ROI in the longer run.
  • Mirror websites are being created by fraudsters, which poses a serious financial as well as security threat to brands in e-commerce where scammers manage to get some traffic on these bogus portals to transact resulting in a financial fraud
  • Account takeover fraud is another offspring of brand infringement, through which scammers get full control of the accounts of genuine users of an e-commerce service which they then use for various frauds activity.

The report concludes that the industry needs, more than ever, to come together and collaborate in creating a brand-safe environment under which brands across all sectors can flourish, thrive, and add to their brand equity. For a successful online future, brands need to create digitally driven guidelines for brand safety as they intensify their digital transformation initiatives, as well as carry out close continuous monitoring of the goals and objectives outlined in such guiding documents.

In essence, a brand safety issue is not an indicator of poor performance that brand custodians should feel shy of talking about. Instead, proactive checks for brand safety issues will make a brand stronger in the digital landscape.