Vibrant News

You can read the full article here, as featured in B2B Marketing

Given the brand safety debacle over YouTube and brand safety, you would think that the subject was always front of mind at media agencies — if not before, then certainly at some point during the first quarter.

However, only one in four (27%) media buyers feels informed about what brand safety measures are in place when they buy inventory, according to new research from Vibrant Media. A matching quarter (24%) didn’t answer the question, while more than a third don’t feel informed and a sixth feel only informed by some vendors, and even then only partially.

So there you have it — if you assume that the quarter of respondents who didn’t answer did so because they didn’t have an answer to give, that really leaves us with just one in four feeling confident when they buy inventory that they know what brand safety precautions are in place.

Interestingly, the research also went on to identify that for nearly nine in ten buyers, brand safety is their top priority and that three in four agree that sites with unsafe content should be boycotted. Nevertheless, not even one in three media buyers — just 28% — claim to know where their ads are running.

Quite a coincidence that, isn’t it? Just 27% of media buyers feel informed of the brand safety measures in place at sites whose spots they are buying and a corresponding 28% of marketers feel they know where their ads are going.

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You can read the full article here, as featured in Mediapost

Post-scandal research suggests alarming lack of brand safety knowledge

New ad placement guarantee spearheaded by Vibrant Media Co-Founder, Doug Stevenson

New research conducted in the aftermath of the 2017 brand safety scandal shows that just one in four advertising buyers and planners at leading media agencies (27.27 per cent) say with confidence that they feel informed of the brand safety measures of the ads they buy. Over a third (33.33 per cent) do not feel informed and one sixth (15.15 per cent) either only feel informed from certain vendors or to a partial extent. Nearly a quarter of respondents (24.24 per cent) failed to answer the specific question put to them on how informed they were of ad vendors’ brand safety measures. Researchers from Vibrant Media, the LEAN native ad company that conducted the research, identified this particular result as an unusually high and notable number of failed responses to a specific question which may indicate media executives’ unwillingness to admit their lack of brand safety knowledge.

Such alarmingly low levels of knowledge persist in the wake of the 2017 brand safety scandal and despite 87.87 per cent of ad planners and buyers stating that their number one priority is ensuring brand safe environments for their marketing clients. Three-fifths of planners and buyers (59.09 per cent) even say that brand safety is typically discussed for media buys, yet fewer than three out of ten (28.78 per cent) say they always know where their ads are running.

However, ad buyers may be becoming more active on brand safety, as nearly half (49.99 per cent) say they will be actively asking for brand safety information in media buys following the scandal, and nearly three quarters (73.43 per cent) agree with pulling ad spend on sites that have unsafe content, as huge brands across the world did in spring 2017. This increasing activism from leading media agencies has prompted Doug Stevenson, Co-Founder of Vibrant Media, to spearhead a new ad placement guarantee to re-emphasise and reassure planners and buyers of Vibrant Media’s brand safety measures, action against ad fraud, and optimum viewability.

He said, “Our new ad placement guarantee has emerged from a codification of Vibrant Media’s current practices, technological optimizations and a public statement of our hard-line approach to shutting down ad impressions and monetization from any media title that infringes our stated quality standards. It also stresses our refusal to abrogate human responsibility from ad placement despite our continuing commitment to introducing new technological efficiencies. This is very important, considering that nearly three-quarters of ad buyers and planners (74.24 per cent) told our researchers that it’s more difficult to ensure brand safe environments when buying programmatically on open exchanges. Quality digital ad placement requires man and machine to work in concert.”

Operation Of Vibrant Media’s Ad Placement Guarantee

Vibrant Media’s Content Quality Team operates a twelve-step process to vet publishers’ operations and content before permitting them into its 6600 strong network. They also manage SafeServe™, Vibrant Media’s proprietary content verification technology, which has been continuously optimized over eleven years since it was first developed. Before a Vibrant Media ad is placed anywhere, SafeServe™ contextually analyses the articles of every vetted publisher in real time for their suitability to display each brands’ ads. The Content Quality Team also reacts immediately to current affairs and the news agenda by manually blocking ads from displaying with content containing newly distasteful or brand damaging words and phrases such as the names of deceased celebrities, brand names facing a crisis and destinations of terrorist incidents or natural disasters. Vibrant Media has always provided advertisers with a full and transparent list of the publishers where ads run, but it has recently bolstered this with third-party verified viewability and fraud metrics. Unlike other companies, Vibrant’s Content Quality Team proactively monitors and investigates IP addresses to understand where campaign traffic is coming from and who is behind the clicks. The team’s strong relationships with their publisher partners means they can help publishers to maintain the quality of their media titles’ content and guarantee high-quality ad placement to brands. All the while editorial integrity remains sacrosanct. However, if any media title fails upon notice to address infringements of Vibrant Media’s ad placement standards within one week, its Vibrant Media ad impressions and monetization will be shut down.

Doug Stevenson said, “Several industry initiatives have taken important steps to promote brand safety, combat ad fraud, and optimize viewability, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the US and Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK, the JICWEBS’ Brand Safety Digital Trading Standards Group (DTSG), and the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). Vibrant Media is an active supporter of and contributor to those efforts, but we believe we have a responsibility to do even more to protect our partners from the risks of brand damage and wasted spending from those systemic problems.”

Vibrant Media’s Premium Promise

The ad placement guarantee joins Vibrant’s assurance of verified viewability and value in Vibrant Media’s Premium Promise.

Ad performance is verified by industry trusted measurement companies. These partners enable Vibrant Media’s Content Quality Team to monitor viewability, brand safety, ad fraud and overall performance in real time, as well as to provide evaluation reports to clients on demand. Vibrant has also been awarded industry seals and certifications. The ABC audited JICWEBS Brand Safety/DTSG Seal gives brands greater reassurance that their advertising is more likely to reach the right audience and is not associated with content that could jeopardize brand reputation.  TAG’s Inventory Quality Guidelines (IQG) Seal certifies Vibrant Media’s compliance with a set of common disclosures that describe and disclose the characteristics of advertising inventory and creative content before and during transactions.

Ad viewability is optimized by placing Vibrant’s LEAN ads natively within editorial text and images of publishers that consumers trust. Vibrant Media has embraced the GroupM viewability standards – the most stringent in the industry – enabling it to guarantee 100% viewable ads to advertisers.

Advertisers get value for money by only paying for ads when a qualified relevant human interacts with a viewable ad. This innovative, risk-free billing structure is enabled by Vibrant’s contextual targeting, intelligent qualification technology (Vibrant IQ) and consumer-initiated approach to displaying ads.

 

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For further editorial information, interviews or images, please contact: vibrant@pwkpr.com or call +44 (0) 7904 414 889.

Notes To Editors

Research conducted by Vibrant Media with 66 media planners and buyers at leading media agencies across Germany, United Kingdom and the United States of America. Country specific statistics and comparisons are available upon request.

About Vibrant Media

Formed in 2000, Vibrant Media is the original native advertising platform. Vibrant connects consumers in real time with engaging content and brand experiences cross-platform. Delivered directly off of words, images & video within a premium native environment, Vibrant’s solutions are designed to be viewable, relevant and engaging. With over 6,600 premium publishers, reaching more than 450 million unique users per month, Vibrant delivers native advertising at scale. Vibrant works with top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Chrysler and AT&T. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in New York, Toronto, San Francisco, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, London, Hamburg, Munich, and Dusseldorf. For more information about Vibrant, please visit www.vibrantmedia.com , http://54.162.255.12/news/vibrant-news/, www.facebook.com/vibrantmedia  or www.twitter.com/vibrantmedia. Vibrant’s blog with insights on the digital marketing industry can be found at http://54.162.255.12/news/vibrant-blog/

 

Last week in NYC we hosted a launch party for our new immersive advertising solutions – Vibrant Insperience. However, this wasn’t your typical party. Yes we had an open bar, and yes there was a great selection of appetizers, but what made this party different was the VR stations positioned around the room. You see we wanted people to really interact. Not with each other of course… but with technology!

Vibrant Insperience is all about changing passive consumers into active participants when it comes to marketing, using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). There’s a new excitement in the marketing industry. We’ve been in a stage where many people in tech, strategy, brand management, media planning and buying have been dealing so much with the problems faced by digital advertising – using data and metrics, managing mobile, viewability, ad blocking, ad fraud, user experience and more – that much of the fun of digital advertising has fallen by the wayside. AR and VR ads bring new levels of functionality to advertising that mean consumers will interact with brands in whole new ways. Whole new fun ways!

We launched our new suite of solutions after hearing from our brands and agencies how much they were investing in 360 degree video content. It was obvious that brands wanted to truly engage people, not just convey their message by a static banner. We’d seen brands like wine producers giving 360 tours of their vineyards to tourist destinations showcasing the range of facilities through panoramic videos. But often, this great content stayed housed on their websites and social channels or was confined to apps.

Vibrant Insperience is about taking the latest and greatest content assets and using these to create immersive, interactive advertising campaigns. It’s simply another way to reach and engage consumers, allowing brands to amplify this great content they have produced. We’ve done this previously with content trends like articles, then videos, now it’s time for 360/VR & AR content.

The stats speak for themselves. Compared to 2D ads, we are seeing interaction rates of 7X, with 3X greater purchase intent. So not only are they fun, but they work!

 

Digital advertising is changing: virtual reality and augmented reality marketing strategies have matured to a position of true viability so that marketers can offer consumers far more entertaining, compelling and immersive ad campaigns that inspire personal affinities with brands.

There’s a new excitement in the marketing industry. We’ve been in a stage where many people in tech, strategy, brand management, media planning and buying have been dealing so much with the problems faced by digital advertising – using data and metrics, managing mobile, viewability, ad blocking, ad fraud, user experience and more – that much of the fun of digital advertising has fallen by the wayside.

Fundamentally, new creative approaches and radical marketing tactics have taken a back seat, leaving many consumers uninspired by the ads that they’re served. But now, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) marketing strategies have matured to a position of true viability so that marketers can offer consumers far more entertaining, compelling and immersive ad campaigns that inspire personal affinities with brands.

AR and VR ads bring new levels of functionality to advertising that mean consumers will interact with brands in whole new ways. They’re not just advertisements as we’ve known them previously, whereby consumers simply observe commercial information that’s presented to them. AR and VR ads enable people to virtually experience products and services. They can try on make-up and clothes (see video below); attend a pop concert; look around a holiday resort; or be a character in a branded game – and they don’t need to visit a store to do so.

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You can read the full article by Vibrant’s Founder and Executive Chairman Craig Gooding here, as featured in Global Marketing Alliance