Trusted Media Brands and Advertiser Perceptions today released a new survey on the key issues facing marketers, which revealed that brand safety has become a mandatory, driving factor in marketing campaign decision-making.
According to the survey, more than 75 percent (three out of four) believe that marketing programs executed in brand-safe content environments have a direct impact on their bottom line: return on investment (ROI).
The survey, Digital Priorities, Brand Safety Attitudes and ROI, finds that 91 percent (nine out of 10) of digital marketers are already taking or planning to take steps focused on implementing brand-safe strategies in their digital marketing plans. Many industry leaders are also taking steps to ensure brand safety through vetting inappropriate sites. The YouTube advertiser boycott and concerns over Facebook’s fake news issues were catalysts in driving this brand safety focus.
Clients are also concerned about their programmatic advertising. The study shows over 40 percent will elevate these efforts by adopting private marketplaces.
“The value of brand-safe advertising has become a core focus for marketers,” says Rich Sutton, Trusted Media Brands’ chief revenue officer. “Performance measurement is emerging for both marketers and agencies that closely interlinks ROI and brand safety to determine digital campaigns’ effectiveness.”
Trusted Media Brands is a thought leader in looking at agency and brand-side marketers’ sentiment toward measuring and assessing industry issues in digital media buying, such as brand safety, video and other critical industry issues.
While agency and brand marketers alike are working to solve for issues in brand safety, Trusted Media Brands’ Digital Priorities, Brand Safety Attitudes and ROI study also uncovers differentiating views on what environments constitute as brand safe.
Key highlights from the survey include:
- Seventy-Five Percent of Brand Marketers Believe Brand Safety Affects ROI. The results of this research drive home that the content matters, and placing ads in trusted, brand-safe environments are now at the forefront in digital planning, seen as essential to advertising effectiveness. Advertising in brand-safe environments is believed to drive significant impact on key measures such as audience quality (83 percent), brand equity (82 percent) and brand lift (79 percent). More than three-quarters believe that brand safety impacts ROI (77 percent).
- Use of Programmatic, Private Marketplaces Taking Over Vetting Sites. More than half of all participants (56 percent) have previously blacklisted specific sites or channels to improve brand safety of their digital media buys. Forty-one percent of participants think the next likely step is an increase in the usage of private marketplaces.
- Content Trumps Social for Brand-Safe Delivery. More than half of all participants rank news websites including Disney.com, WSJ.com and NYtimes.com as extremely brand safe. In comparison, only 34 percent of participants view Facebook in the same light, with Snapchat ranking the lowest at 25 percent among social platforms.
- Marketers Place More Trust in Social Than Their Agencies. Marketers and agencies convey differing viewpoints on social media platforms’ abilities to deliver a brand-safe environment. Over 30 percent of marketers rate social platforms such as YouTube capable of serving brand-safe content, while only 20 percent of agency participants agree with this perception.
- Brand-Safe Publishers Are Key. Agencies are ahead of marketers when it comes to improving brand safety in digital media buys. In 2017, 64 percent of agency participants have already made deliberate efforts to improve brand safety methods vs. 43 percent of marketers taking these steps.
The Trusted Media Brands survey was conducted in June 2017 among roughly 300 U.S. digital media decision-makers from the Advertiser Perceptions Omnibus Panel. Download the white paper, along with additional chart and graphs from the study, here.
About Trusted Media Brands
Trusted Media Brands is a visionary, brand-driven multiplatform media company, home to iconic brands like Taste of Home, the world’s largest circulation food media brand; Reader’s Digest; The Family Handyman, America’s leading source for DIY; a suite of highly targeted brands including Birds & Blooms, Country, Country Woman, Farm & Ranch Living and Reminisce; and digital properties which include EnrichU, the Taste Community and Haven Home Media. Trusted Media Brands reaches active consumers who genuinely connect with our blend of uplifting and enduring expertly-curated family, food, health, home improvement, finance and humor content – digitally, via social media, magazines and books, and events and experiences. Founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace as The Reader’s Digest Association, one of the first user-generated content publishers, Trusted Media Brands is headquartered in New York City.
About Advertiser Perceptions
Advertiser Perceptions is the world leader in providing media company executives with the research-based advertiser insight and guidance necessary for producing superior advertiser experiences. The company specializes in determining, analyzing, communicating and applying what advertisers think — their plans, opinions and motivations.
