By Nick Reid, Managing Director EMEA, DoubleVerify
Digital advertising is primed for yet another battle in the long-standing war of brand safety, with artificial intelligence (AI) playing the role of both protagonist and antagonist. Indeed, the emergence of AI as a content creation tool has democratised and supercharged creativity globally. On the one hand, this has fostered a whole new category of art, but it also has led to an even greater degree of online misinformation and inflammatory content being promoted.
In this increasingly AI-influenced, digital media ecosystem, advertisers must remain cautious of the contexts in which their campaigns are being seen, as poor brand safety and brand suitability can negatively impact business outcomes.
Ensuring that ads are delivered in the right environments requires data analysis at a large scale, especially with increasingly sophisticated, bad-acting AI making this task even more difficult. The answer lies in fighting fire with fire — harnessing good AI to ensure ads are not only brand safe, but are optimised toward driving outcomes.
Harming the brand
The growth of AI-fuelled inflammatory content is particularly prevalent on social media, where it is generated by users and can be a response to political events or issues. For instance, ongoing global conflicts and elections are prime targets for AI-driven content that promotes intentionally false, misleading or unsavoury rhetoric. This content could be, for example, unreliable or unsubstantiated information, the use of coded language, incitement to violence, or slurs directed at public figures.
These circumstances present several challenges for brands in ensuring their advertising on social platforms and other online environments avoids placement alongside any potentially reputationally damaging content.
A recent study by researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities found that 74.5% of misinformation-based websites are financially supported by advertising. Worryingly, between 46% and 82% of brands from across industries including household items, technology, finance, health, and education were found to have had instances of appearing on misinformation sites. Among the 100 most active advertisers, this figure stood at 55%.
This becomes an even more significant issue for brands when it’s considered that 68% of consumers are concerned about the increasing levels of intentionally false or misleading information and 61% would be less likely to use a brand again if they saw it advertised next to this content.
Intelligently ensuring brand safety
AI is able to analyse and flag any content that could be deemed to not have met an advertiser’s brand safety guidelines, categorising this content under a list of sites that should be monitored and/or blocked. This list can be consistently kept up to date and monitored by AI, ensuring that brands are not risking their reputation or funding bad actors through their ad spending.
Simultaneously, AI can be leveraged to proactively find the content that’s not only brand safe but also most aligns with the brand to ensure that advertisers can reach the most relevant audiences and maximise the effectiveness of their advertising.
Moreover, there are now advanced AI-based algorithms which brands can leverage in tandem to optimise ad decisioning towards tailored outcomes. Making use of the full spectrum of available data signals and crunching them in mere seconds, these solutions mean brands can be assured that ad placements are made in safe and suitable environments, with performance optimised toward KPIs that matter to them. This is combined with transparent reporting, meaning advertisers know exactly where their campaigns are going and how they are performing.
This new AI-led era has opened up a plethora of opportunities for advertisers, but also dangers. Advertisers need to be aware of the wave of AI-fuelled content flooding the internet, while also embracing the right AI-powered solutions that will help them automate their brand safety and media performance strategy. While it isn’t quite the dystopian scenario of Rise of the Machines, there is a war brewing between the positive and negative applications of the technology. Thankfully, solutions exist to ensure advertisers aren’t funding these negative use cases, and that brands are instead thriving in spite of unsuitable AI-fuelled content. It’s crucial that AI is leveraged responsibly in order to counteract potential misuse.
