How Safe is your Brand with B2B Display Advertising?

Cheaply designed B2B display solutions can at the end cause more harm than good to your brand and your budget! 

Do mind that as much as the approach to safe contextual placement runs with a zero-tolerance attitude, we must remember that the nature of automated Programmatic B2B  advertising is directed by an algorithm that selects a company, not a web-site.

 Digital opens many opportunities to us with data, but along with those opportunities come some risk and we have to use technology and vigilance to mitigate that risk. Next time to discuss B2B display advertising, make sure you ask how the digital supply chain is handled.

Some of the questions that need handling are below.

Third party Measurement – i.e do they mark their own homework or will they allow for 3rd party measurement solutions – which typically will report issues like illegitimate sites, brand exposure to the wrong context…

Viewability – How many of the ads will actually be seen by the audience. Whereas aiming at 100% in programmatic is not optimal, if your ads appear in the wrong context and are not seen, certainly results will not come.

Fraud/ Non-human traffic. This is a known challenge in digital advertising as normally about 50% of internet traffic is fraudulent. In the advertising context, this can include from media sites of little value that offer their space for sale to non-human traffic. We have seen customers using some measurement tools that result in 100% over performance in campaigns just because they can not remove machine-clicks.

Whereas IP targeting is very efficient in removing this kind of errors, solutions around cookie pools – or audiences look-alikes, are certainly prone to these problems.

Brand Safety, which is not just the right inventory but the right context. ie. if you are a car manufacturer you most likely do not want to appear in articles next to a car crash.

Privacy – Is the solution compliant with GDPR or similar legislation?

How to fix it for good

There is no doubt that Programmatic B2B Display Advertising holds the key for hyper-targeted digital demand generation.

When looking ahead we see digital advertising as an ecosystem where native media players have a strong lead because of their understanding of the value chain and their ability to place fail-safe checks in critical spots. Be aware of technology platforms or do-it-all solutions that just plug and play existing solutions off-the-shelve. They most likely will score low in brand safety.

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