Category: Business Intelligence

Brand Safety Crisis Can Prompt Consumer Backlash Against Brand

In this article, MarTechSeries comments a survey conducted by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) and Brand Safety Institute (BSI). Hereafter are our takeaways:

Customers have a broad definition of “Brand Safety”

“The survey also discovered that consumers define brand safety broadly, including issues such as ad-related piracy and malware, as well as those involving ad placement around inappropriate content.”

“Inappropriate” content has a very personal definition…

As discussed in previous posts for Fake News: What is fake for someone is not fake for others. Take Homeopathy. Some believes in it, others do not.  The same applies to “inappropriate”. Some people believe a content is inappropriate, others won’t. Like for Rap lyrics for example.

Brand means values and values are emotions.

… but, for a very large majority,  has negative impacts. On everyone involved.

From the article:

Advertisers responsibility

  • Large majorities of respondents said advertisers should prevent their ads from running near hate speech (73 percent), pornographic content (73 percent), violent content (70 percent), and illegal drug-related content (69 percent).
  • More than half of respondents said that advertisers should prevent their ads from running near stolen/pirated movies or TV shows (53 percent) and unsafe or hacked websites (73 percent).
  • Less than half of respondents said advertisers should prevent their ads from running near gambling-related content (43 percent) or controversial political views (41 percent).

Majority says negative impacts are real.

  • The overwhelming majority of respondents (90 percent) said it was very or somewhat important for advertisers to make sure their ads don’t appear near dangerous, offensive, or inappropriate content.
  • If respondents discovered ads for a product they regularly buy had appeared next to racist Neo-Nazi propaganda, 87 percent said they would reduce their spending on that product, and 58 percent said they would stop buying it altogether.
  • If respondents discovered such ads next to terrorist recruiting videos, 90 percent would reduce their spending on the product advertised, and 67 percent would stop buying it altogether.
  • If respondents discovered such ads on a website promoting illegal activities such as stolen videos and other content, 82 percent would reduce their spending on the product advertised, and 45 percent would stop buying it altogether.
  • If respondents discovered such an ad had infected their computer or mobile device with malware, 93 percent would reduce their spending on the product advertised, and 73 percent would stop buying it altogether.

Everybody is accounted responsible: Advertiser, Ad Agency, Publisher, Ad Tech.

  • When asked who should be responsible for ensuring ads do not run with dangerous, offensive, or inappropriate content, respondents assigned responsibility broadly, with 70 percent naming the advertiser, 68 percent the ad agency, 61 percent the website owner, and 46 percent the technology provider.

Bottom line:

* Your Brand, to be truly safe, must be compatible with the brand of the publisher, or any support.

* This can only be done via AI profiling as it must be Unbiased, Universal and always Up-to-date.

* This can not be done by keyword-based queries. Keywords in a page don’t profile brand values.

TrustedOut’s solution for Brand Safety in 1 slide:

Questions? Contact us!

 

 

 

Your business is all about the content you trust.

Image Credit: SEOMarketing

Knowledge from Content makes or breaks any future.

Applies to individuals but also organizations and businesses, of all sizes and sorts.

We are our Education.
So is your Business.

What we are depends on the education we were given. Need proof?
MIT scientists created a “psychopath” AI by feeding it violent content from Reddit

Same applies to any Businesses. Your Business is how it was educated.

No Trust in Content,  No Trust in business future.

Trust in Content is the #1 vital condition to any business.

1st, define the content you trust, 2nd, feed all business decision and education processes with it.

Trust in Content is not a nice to have, it’s a vital, critical, mandatory must have. Tools are fed with Content. No matter how your tools are, fed with poor content, the smartest tools and the smartest operator of those tools will produce poor performances. Is it what you want for your business?

No trust in content, no need for any tools otherwise it would be, not only a waste of time and money, but a very dangerous way to make bet on your business future.

It all starts with content you trust.

  1. Define the content you need
  2. Create your Corpus with TrustedOut and get the corresponding Media, Sources and Articles abstracts and links
  3. Now, Feed all your tools with content you trust

 

Corpus Intelligence for every segment of your business.

Hereafter is an example of an Enterprise organized by Industry. Also applies to any other type of business organization.

Want to give it a try?
Contact us!

 

How our AI-powered classification works.

We receive a lot of questions about how our AI-powered Classification is working, so we decided to make 2 drawings to explain how it works.

1. The Taxonomy.
Gauging the media from the Inside.
Including expertise and sensitivity.

A media has sources which each publishes new articles. From every new article, we solely keep useful words (no stop words such as “the, is, but…”) which we call an “abstract”.

Every single work of this new abstract is matched vs several hundreds of datasets. Every single classification in our taxonomy has its own dataset.

Each 1 million abstracts, this means 75,000,000,000 operations.

This method is close to the tribe model. Every tribe uses a dialect made of words signing this dialect. When you recognize a dialect, you recognize a tribe. Here is a classification. Depending on the number and the weight of words, we are able to gauge the level of expertise in the classification. This gives us a score for the article.

Playing with the length of past days, we can also gauge the sensitivity to news for the sources. Compiling sources tells us where the media stands.

Bottom line: We have a universal taxonomy, always updated and able to be filtered by expertise level and over 3 periods of time to sense time sensitivity (and trend forming, but we’ll tell you more real soon)

2. The Perceptions.
Gauging the media from the Outside.
How is a Media “spotted as”.

“Fake news”, “Junk science”, and other toxic appreciations are tangible. Rarely, can this be intangible (for sure), because those are up to appreciations. What is “fake news” to some people, is not for others. This is why we treat those appreciations as “spotted as”, or “perceived on the internet as”.

Same as for our taxonomy, perception is an appreciation, but where taxonomy is about the publisher itself, we call it the Publisher Inside, the perception is the Publisher Outside, or how the publisher is perceived for those terms.

To do this, we collect how the publisher is perceived on the Internet, strictly excluding any publisher properties.

This gives us pages and words which we match with Perception datasets (one for “fake news”, one for “junk science” and so on) in a similar way explained above.

We then have a score which when above a threshold make the publication “spotted as fake news” for example.

Bottom line: We sense how a publication is perceived as not one person or group can make any universal statement.

Questions? Shoot!

 

“Fake news” means almost nothing.

This post is inspired by this Washington Post article

3 Americans out of 4 believe traditional news organizations report “fake news.”…

This number came from a 2018 Monmouth University poll.

We will not comment or enter in the political argument but focus on the definition of what “fake news” means.

… but what does “fake news” mean?

“When you see the result, you don’t know what it means,” argued Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of American Press Institute, who has a background in polling with Pew Research.

“It could mean stories I don’t like, stories that are critical of a person I like, stories that have a factual error, stories that are fundamentally wrong, or stories made up out of whole cloth by pranksters or political propagandists,” he said.

Are “fake news” “factual coverage I don’t like”?

And if “fake news” includes “factual coverage that I don’t like,” it’s no wonder the negative numbers are so high. If it also includes “editorial decisions” that reflect negatively on a particular officeholder, it’s even less wonder.

It’s not about “fake”, it’s about “your definition of Trust”.

The level of trust on “Media I use” is 50% higher than Media in general.

… and your definition of trust is what TrustedOut is all about.

TrustedOut:
A database of AI-profiled Media.

”For analytics and brand safety,
what’s not Trusted In, can not be Trusted Out.”

Questions? Shoot!

 

People have shifted their trust to the relationships within their control.

Only 1 in 5 believes the system is working, and 1 in 2 thinks the reverse.

In this article, Why The Most Trusted Brands Will Also Be The Most Successful, Which-50 Media writes: “According to the authors (2019 Global Edelman Trust Index), “Trust has changed profoundly in the past year — people have shifted their trust to the relationships within their control.”. Indeed, the study revealed an urgent desire for change. “All [customers] share an urgent desire for change. Only one in five feels that the system is working for them, with nearly half of the mass population believing that the system is failing them.”

Why? Growing distrust in Media and Gov.

Distrust is, both in Media and Gov, and both in Europe and the US.

Reminder: Customers (readers) will give the most value to brands that they trust to do the right thing by them.

1/ Proof: 50% more trust on media I use vs media in general.

While distrust is general, trust definition is personal.

2/ Point: Consumer/reader Trust is Brand value.

Consumer trust is a vital and a key differentiator for publishers

3/ Caution: Hazardous ad placements impact brand value.

Brand Safety Violations: Consumers question brand’s motives.

Bottom line: CMOs must analyze and advertise on sites they trust.

Deliver Trustworthy and Smarter Social Intelligence.

Can you make strategic decisions on doubtful insights?

Fix Brand Safety with AI-operated WhiteListing.

Can you afford to put your brand at risk?

Questions? Contact us!

 

 

 

 

Adding News-Sensitivity in our Taxonomy.

Taxonomy classification over different periods for CNN Politics.

Brand Safety 2.0 is about brand values.

As we wrote in our previous post: “Brand Safety 1.0 was about toxic keywords, 2.0 adds brand values.”

Brand values are tangible. So must be media profiling.

To gauge brand values, which are made of tangible perceptions, the matching publisher brands must be profiled with content classification, using AI to be unbiased, universal and always up-to-date.

Our AI-based Taxonomy and massive data processing already allow universal taxonomy AND expertise depth…

We’ve presented, in previous posts, our universal taxonomy and its DNA view: “Media profiles are key to Business Intelligence and Advertising.”

… announcing today, new-sensitivity in taxonomy!

Playing with periods of time in the past, past week, past month, past quarter, we are now able to classify accordingly our classification and thus, here, our taxonomy.

In other words, depending on the marketeer project and brand values, TrustedOut will be able to deliver news-sensitive or stable media.

No UI yet, but we couldn’t keep this for ourselves, here’s how CNN – Politics looks like over past week, month and quarter.

A quick read is:

International:

… disappears from top 5 over the period of time of the past quarter (-90 days). This might be due Iran and trade war/mexico stuff. Depth is also getting lower with time.

Political party:

… goes lower with time.

Defense gets civil over time and Education and LGBTQ are very news sensitive. Disappear over time.

New UI and new killer feature coming up…

We will include news-sensibility in our Corpus definition and, teasing again, we’ll reveal a killer features using this brand new and unique capability,

Stay tuned.

Feel free to reach out if you have a question!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brand Safety 1.0 was about toxic keywords, 2.0 adds brand values.

Image result for white list

Challenging the definition of brand safety

In this article, Marketing Dive writes “While the industry settles on what brand safety means, companies are finding fresh ways to define the idea based on their individual values” and goes on:

“Brand safety is a highly nuanced concept, largely because each brand has a unique view as to what constitutes a safe ad placement.”

We could not agree more.

Articles add 2 interesting cases:

“The definition of controversial content also differs by brand, as illustrated by Nike’s decision to feature Colin Kaepernick in its 30th anniversary campaign last year. This contentious move was beneficial for Nike because the actions of the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback align with the brand’s progressive values, as demonstrated in the campaign slogan “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” A brand with more traditionalist or conservative values would steer clear of content relating to a controversial sports star for fear of damaging its reputation.

Equally, a brand such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, which took a strong stance in the national gun debate following the Parkland shooting, wouldn’t want to be associated with online content relating to violence or shootings. However, rival retailers that take a different view on the firearms debate may welcome a placement alongside a news story about gun crime to reinforce the need for their products. Ultimately, defining and executing brand safety is about being intentional and acting on a brand’s unique vision and values. This will inevitably be different for each company.”

Brand Safety 2.0 is about Brand values.

Brand Safety 1.0 was about having the brand protected at the content level with a query made of  “must-have” words and the “must-not-have” ones.

The tangible source-based intelligence.

Brand Safety 2.0 is about the brand values of the publisher to be in line with the brand values of the advertiser. This is tangible and requires evaluations.

Those evaluations must be unbiased, universal and always up-to-date. And to not be too limitative, have to be large and broadly cover a desired market. Consequently, only AI, Machine Learning can deliver and maintain this. No human curation can do and must not do.

We name this, Corpus Intelligence. The Corpus representing all materials used for a project: analytics, marketing, PR…

By providing desired and user-defined trustworthy content, Corpus Intelligence is the vital complement to any piece of content crunch, such as social intelligence (to feed products like Digimind, Synthesio, IBM Watson…) and Online Advertising Whitelisting (to feed trading desks, ad delivery platforms…)

An example? Let’s take MarketingDive.com

Let’s ask TrustedOut how Marketing dive is perceived to gauge what advertiser brand values are compatible? Here are the taxonomy classifications:

  • Top Categories
    General › Economy And Enterprise
    General › Economy And Enterprise › Marketing
    General › Economy And Enterprise › Advertising
    Industries › Information And Communication › Online Media
  • Specialized
    People › Lifestyle › Food And Beverage
    General › Tech › Digital Tech
  • Spotted as
    Fake News › No

Consequently, if your brand has values matching the above, MarketingDive.com will be in the whitelist TrustedOut will build for you and will feed your ad delivery platform. Within this whitelist, your programmatic query will add keywords selections.

Whitelisting and programmatic queries, both, make your brand totally safe.

Questions? Contact-us!

 

 

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it…

… if you think about that, you’ll do things differently” – Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett’s quote applies straight to Brand Safety.

In this article from Which-50 Media, “Three Simple Steps For Implementing Programmatic Brand Safety“, Which-50 Media writes:

“The rapid adoption of omnichannel marketing executed through programmatic media buying has brought the challenges of brand safety, ad fraud, and viewability into sharp relief… It also put the programmatic advertising industry under scrutiny too, prompting a backlash from big media agencies and large brands, predominantly from the UK and US, to suspend their advertising with Google, with countless advertisers quickly jumping on the bandwagon.”

Advertising to be displayed alongside published content aligned with brands and customers’ values.

Yes, we agree with Which-50 when they say: “At the advertiser level, it prompted brands to question how they could ensure that their display advertising ran alongside published content that aligned with both their brand’s and their customers’ values.”

To do so, Which-50 lists 3 steps: Define programmatic brand safety, White and black listings and Private marketplace. On that part, we believe 2 and 3 can be combined with a greater White listing capability. So, 2 parts. Really:

Fixing both, the intangible and tangible.

The intangible keyword-based intelligence.

The brand, to be protected at the content level, a query must be made of keywords to ensure the “must-have” words and the “must-not-have” ones.

This is protect from the intangible, not arguable, environnement incompatible with the brand.

Example: an airline will not want to be near a crash. A query with unwanted keywords related to plane crashes will eliminate those pages. That’s Which-50 1st step. We agree.

The tangible source-based intelligence.

The second part is the brand values of the publisher been in line with the brand values of the advertiser. This is tangible and requires evaluations.

Those evaluations must be unbiased, universal and always up-to-date. And to not be too limitative, have to be large and broadly cover a desired market. Consequently, only AI, Machine Learning can deliver and maintain this. No human curation can do and must not do.

In our example above, the airline might be super high end and only want to appear in upper class lifestyle publications, or the reverse, target popular categories. Might also want to reach out to a special type of profile, like people interested in specialized publications like Law or Automotive…

We name this, Corpus Intelligence. The Corpus representing all materials used for a project: analytics, marketing, PR…

By providing desired and user-defined trustworthy content, Corpus Intelligence is the vital complement to any piece of content crunch, such as social intelligence (to feed products like Digimind, Synthesio, IBM Watson…) and Online Advertising Whitelisting (to feed trading desks, ad delivery platforms…)

Fix Brand Safety with AI-operated WhiteListing.

Can you afford to put your brand at risk?

Questions? Contact us!

 

“It’s a good business, where you write for them.” [updated]

Credits: pexels.com

$4,700,000,000 made by Google from the news industry in 2018.

The study, containing analysis conducted by experts at strategy and economics consulting firm Keystone Strategy and written by the News Media Alliance, and relayed by the New York Times claims Google received an estimated $4.7 billion in revenue in 2018 from crawling and scraping news publishers’ content – without paying the publishers for that use.

The amount of news in Google search results ranges from 16 to 40 percent. Traffic to news publisher raised by 25%.

According to the report, since January 2017, traffic from Google Search to news publisher sites has risen by more than 25 percent to approximately 1.6 billion visits per week in January 2018.

Corresponding with consumers’ shift toward Google for news consumption.

News is becoming increasingly important to Google.

2 impacts:

1/ Saving journalism is of mutual interests.

Google and facebook represents 80% of the advertising market. Earlier this year, we wrote this post.

Saving journalism. [updated 2/19/19]

2/ Profiling media is even more crucial.

Google Search or News may send you to publishers that are not within your definition of trust.

TrustedOut is not, at this point, as B2C offer but for B2B, marketing professionals must, even more carefully, do their analytics and select their ad campaign white lists within their selection of trust and be influenced by Google Search, nor Google News. As we say:

If it’s not trusted in, it can not be trusted out.

Deliver Trustworthy and Smarter Social Intelligence.

Can you make strategic decisions on doubtful insights?

Fix Brand Safety with AI-operated WhiteListing.

Can you afford to put your brand at risk?

Update: Dependence on Google?

CCN is Shutting Down after Google’s June 2019 Core Update

Questions? Contact us!

 

Brand Safety Violations: Consumers question brand’s motives.

Wonder what a brand safety violation means for your customers or prospects? This article from Marketing Dive explains:

Consumers believe brands intentionally place ads next to unsafe content, study says

Why? Because…

People believe advertisers picked where their ads will be placed.

“When people see online ads, they assume the advertiser picked that location intentionally. But that’s typically not the case. Even though organizations rarely select where web ads appear, ads paired with what your members may consider inappropriate content can have a nasty impact on your association’s brand, according to Daniel Avital, chief strategy officer at security and brand-safety firm CHEQ.” says this article on AssociationsNow

“75% of companies report being exposed to brand safety issues, but only 26% have taken some kind of action, and 15% haven’t adjusted their strategies at all.” – MarketingDive

“Seventy-five percent of companies report being exposed to brand safety issues, but only 26% have taken some kind of action, and 15% haven’t adjusted their strategies at all, according to research by GumGum and Custom. Another study by Sizmek found that four in 10 brands report delivering ads on unsafe websites, but 64% find it tough to implement an effective brand safety strategy, and 64% think achieving brand safety can negatively impact how quickly a campaign optimizes.”

“Whitelisting, which only allows ads to be placed in approved environments, may in fact be the best brand safety insurance.” – AdWeek

But, as Marketing Dive adds: “A simple solution is for associations to blacklist certain websites, so ads can’t appear on them, and then to whitelist sites they consider safe. While this is better than an approach that takes no precautions, Avital says new sites can always crop up that aren’t on the blacklist. And whitelisting severely limits the sites that ads can appear on, meaning organizations may not be reaching the people they would like to.”

The solution: Whitelisting from TrustedOut’s AI-Profiled Media database. Safe, large, unbiased, universal, up-to-date:

Related post:

Media profiles are key to Business Intelligence and Advertising. [updated]

Questions? Contact us!