🎛️ Balancing risk and reach: The brand safety dilemma

Do you know where your clicks are coming from? Do you know where your ad is going? No one wants to see their product advertised on a website pushing fake news, conspiracy theories or extremist politics. Marketers practicing brand safety can prevent that from happening, but that practice is imperfect.

A good example of brand safety backfiring revolves around COVID-19. Yes, the pandemic boosted online shopping and brought more readers to news sites. But those banner ads at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal simply showed clouds against a blue-sky background. The reason? Keyword blocking.

“Brand safety technology is so crude it harms news publications,” said Dr. Augustine Fou, Group Chief Digital Officer of Fou Analytics, a marketing science consulting firm. Brands that don’t want to be associated with misinformation surrounding COVID-19 use that term to block ad placement. They avoid being placed on fake news sites trafficking conspiracy theories, but also lose placement on news sites that trafficking facts.

“Good guy detection technology can’t keep up with bad guy technology,” Fou said. Rather than wasting time in a never-ending tech arms race, Fou offered a human solution: know who you are dealing with. Marketers can take the direct route straight to publishers.

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As marketers, we’ve been creating and publishing a lot of content for a very long time. We know that great marketing content can build brand awareness and generate more qualified leads. Unfortunately, the technology we use to build content hasn’t changed a whole lot — until now.

It’s time to reimagine what content can become. Telling stories isn’t the same as it used to be. For today’s audiences, truly telling your story requires an experience. Unlike static tools of the past, an immersive, interactive experience filled with multimedia is not only possible, but simple to create.

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Last week, B2B ABM software company Demandbase launched a hub for their streaming video content, called DBTV. It’s part of a new trend that finds a number of vendors ramping up their video offerings, in some cases approaching the production value and authority of what viewers would expect from a committed TV publisher.

Salesforce announced their own streaming service, Salesforce+, slated for next month. It will broadcast live events and on-demand content. In their release, Salesforce President and CMO Sarah Franklin draws comparisons with other content and product brands, including Disney, Netflix and Peloton.

Terminus also promises high production value with a trailer for their upcoming lineup (also launching next month), which will include a regular series hosted by Terminus co-founder Sangram Vajre. Vajre already has a significant following built around the vendor-agnostic “#FlipMyFunnel” podcast. The associated community boasts more than 10,000 members.

Jon Leiberman, Demandbase VP of Content, Social and Influencer Marketing, indicated to us that last week’s unveiling of DBTV represents phase one of the strategy. Leiberman will also host his own video series on their DBTV hub, called “I’m Thinking of…”.

Leiberman has served in the content role for four months, and in his audit of Demandbase’s content, he found a lack of video.

“One of my initial ideas was, why don’t we do a streaming video hub?” he said. “We know it works for B2C, with the success of Netflix, so why can’t we make it work for B2B? That, coupled with attendance being down for virtual events, showed that it’s a hard ask to show up at a given time and commit to the event. It’s not how people are living their lives these days. They want it when they want it. Even for TV, appointment viewing doesn’t exist except for news and sports.”

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There are many ways to use social and media data to inform your marketing decisions. But the most successful brands depend on data-driven insights to shed light on their overall brand health, analyze trends, anticipate consumer behavior and monitor the competition to ultimately grow their revenue. Join experts from Netbase Quid, who unveil how brands like Tesla, Lululemon and Nike found the secret of social and media data success by applying these insights to their business strategy and programs for maximum impact.

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With the pandemic still a major concern for shoppers, marketers in the retail space should be looking at how better to engage with consumers digitally. It used to be that there were certain categories of products and services that needed to be purchased in-person, which was often the case, especially for big-ticket items. But now in the world of virtual and augmented reality, consumers are test-driving electric vehicles, and renters are inspecting and leasing their new homes.

Consumers expect more, and marketers have to cast a wide net to build the right experience. VR and AR experience software company Wool & Water has done its own consumer research on AR and VR. Co-founders Jeff Bodzewski and Justin McAneny recently shared some best practices with us as marketers pick and choose from this emerging channel. They define the concept of “extended retail” as a broader strategy that helps marketers avoid getting tied down to a single platform or technology that includes AR, VR, smart displays and, eventually, holograms and metaworlds in the years to come.

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“Marketing is about understanding people. It’s that simple. And that hard.” Katelyn Bourgoin, CEO, Customer Camp