The dawn of a new day in brand safety and suitability
By Richard Raddon, co-founder and co-CEO of Zefr
Today we announced that Zefr is utilizing its patented Human-In-The-Loop technology to activate and measure video around the GARM standards on social platforms. This is a major achievement as it represents a sea change from the legacy solutions that gave zero to little control or transparency with brand suitability in video.
What this news means:
- Suitability is no longer subjective
- We, in the industry, owe a debt of gratitude to GARM, WFA, 4A’s, IAB and the countless industry volunteers from every major agency and brand who participated in defining risk levels (low, medium, high) for each of the 11 brand safety categories.
2. Suitability is now measurable
- Now that GARM has defined risk thresholds, accuracy and precision can be measured. Third-parties should be held responsible for inaccurate labeling and measurement. False positives will always exist (especially on platforms that have the scale) but it cannot become the norm. It’s time for accountability.
3. Blunt keyword + semantic tech stacks are no longer “good enough” for video
- The amount of carnage done to good content being blocked by false positives in the past year is no longer good enough — and it’s even more ridiculous considering how the tech stacks don’t work for video. Brands can now be proactive about their responsible marketing initiatives without the unintended consequences of keyword solutions, which over-block high quality and diverse content.
What this doesn’t mean…
- Just because a provider checks a box, it does not mean they are training their system to GARM understanding in video.*
- This does not mean agencies and brands should accept non-transparent data on suitability and safety.*
- This does not mean that open-web safety and suitability approaches can be applied to video platforms.*
The New Era of Brand Safety & Suitability
Third-parties like Zefr play a critical role in ensuring trust in the advertising ecosystem. Brands, agencies, and platforms acknowledge this importance in providing transparency in black-box environments.
But in order to trust your third-party partners, you need to make sure they are investing in technology solutions that are accurate and trained for the highly complex nature of video. If the data isn’t accurate — then it has no value. It’s time we start watching the watchmen.
The GARM standards represent a turning point in the industry’s focus on responsible marketing. Now, we’re making tools available to accurately and precisely solve this issue for the most important medium, video, across the largest platforms in the world. It’s a new era for brand suitability.
* NOTE: If a vendor is marketing GARM targeting or measurement in video, or that they leverage a different tech stack than their open web banner/display solution for video, customers should ask to see the individual GARM Relevance rating (typical scale is 1–100% relevance) on a sample set of videos.
