What Every Marketer Needs To Know About Brand Safety, Suitability, And Performance on YouTube

Recently, we surveyed media agency executives on what they thought were the most important considerations in YouTube advertising, and brand safety and ad performance stood out as the two most important areas to focus on when working with third parties. Brand suitability, on the other hand, while still important, wasn’t seen as quite as important as safety and performance.

But in our follow-up conversations with marketers around the industry, we actually found that many don’t fully understand the difference between brand safety and brand suitability. What’s more, we discovered that some marketers don’t fully grasp how both brand safety and suitability are closely related to performance and scale.

So, in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, we developed a new report that unpacks what marketers need to know about brand safety, suitability, and performance on YouTube.

In this study, you’ll find:

• A timeline of the important steps YouTube has taken to be over 99% brand safe, and what marketers need to do to ensure their campaigns are 100% brand safe
• The 5 most common ways that content can be brand safe, but not suitable for the average advertiser — and what marketers can do to avoid this safe but unsuitable content
• YouTube campaigns are over 99% safe without using any brand suitability tactics, but without using suitability tactics, they can be 31% unsuitable for the average advertiser
• How extensive keyword blocking can end up limiting scale and performance — for example, keyword blocking of common words like “knife” and “shot” can block big swaths of premium content on YouTube such as 8.7M views on the Food Network and and 172M views on ESPN, respectively
• How contextual targeting can also blunt performance when exclusively targeting or entirely blocking certain content categories — for example, Music and News content are among the most blocked content areas on YouTube, but were among the top performing content areas in the first half of 2021

Download the e-book here for insights on brand suitability, brand safety, and ad performance on YouTube — and get in touch with us if you’d like learn more about how Pixability can help drive your brand suitability strategy on YouTube.