Brand safety more important than viewability for Westpac
While marketers argue over the issue of viewabilty in digital advertising, the head of media and agency management at Westpac Group has highlighted brand safety as a more pressing issue for the brand.
Brand safety needs to be addressed: Maria Grivas, (UM Australia), Toby Dewar Westpac), James Diamond (Integral Ad Science and Jonas Jaanimagi (IAB)
Speaking on a panel at Mumbrella360 on issues of transparency, Westpac’s Toby Dewar said viewability and lost ads could always be addressed, but brand safety breaches were difficult to contain once they occurred.
Asked which was more important to the brand, Dewar responded “brand safety by a long way”.
“It takes me a lot longer to unwind that one impression run in a un-brand-safe environment,” Dewar said.
“If I lose 50% of my buy through viewability, I can address that more easily, so obviously brand safety overwhelmingly.”
Dewar said that the issue of brand safety had always been around, but increased awareness further up the corporate chain meant it had now become a mainstream issue and that further work needed to be done to address it.
“[Brand safety] has always been an issue,” he said.
“I think across all different media brand safety is very important but no doubt at the moment there is a spotlight on the issue. I think as marketers it’s our job to passionately build brands and a key way of doing that is also to protect the brands that we work on and that’s why the conversation around brand safety is very important.
“When you consider what’s happening of late in the last few months there have been some really big global brands and local brands have been caught up on brand safety on some big platforms and that tells me that we have probably not got it right yet and there is work to be done.”
He said that one of the key drivers was that the conversation had shifted from media and marketing circles to the mainstream where it was now being discussed in the boardroom.
“For us as marketers looking after brands and what we need to do and what we can do around brand safety is particularly important.”
He said that the responsibility for brand safety needed to be shared across clients, agencies and platforms.
“I think it’s everyone, I feel it’s all part of the value chain. It sits with me and my team, but when it happens in the setup or afterwards the chain of events when it comes to suppliers, technology and agencies, everyone needs to sort of step in and I think as an industry have a point of view on collectively addressing the issue as well.”
Maria Grivas, chief digital officer with UM Australia, said agencies needed to be able to adapt and react as issues arose, but admitted it was impossible to guarantee 100% brand safety.
“We know that brand safety and the tools that are at our disposal to manage it aren’t foolproof,” Grivas said.
“There isn’t a way that we are ever going to with 100% certainty be able to avoid an incident of an impression showing up in a content environment that’s unsavoury. We can do what we can to minimise that risk and get really close to zero, but it’s an impossibility with the way that digital works to get to zero.”
I believe that Dewar really nails this panel, addressing brand safety over viewability, and what he says is true! Having a lot of views is something that can be addressed with much more ease — and I think he makes the point perfectly: “If I lose 50% of my buy through viewability, I can address that more easily, so obviously brand safety overwhelmingly.”
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