In Connected TV, Brand Safety Is Still a Goal, Not the Norm

On a spreadsheet with reams of data on a connected TV campaign, a far-right QAnon-linked broadcaster popped up as a media destination for advertisements, when a media buyer—who requested anonymity with Adweek for this interview—was doing routine auditing. The buyer said the client, a global advertiser, would not want to appear on the network, which has aired programming questioning pandemic science and whether Joe Biden really won the 2020 presidential election. Not only had the media buyer’s agency unknowingly purchased airtime with a publisher their client would prefer not to fund, but they almost didn’t know it happened: The information was housed in a nonstandard data category. What's more, 97% of data entries were blank in that category, meaning that an even higher proportion of ad spend could be diverted to undesirable publishers without the buyer’s knowledge. The buyer’s reaction to this episode was one of resignation, not shock. “I already know I can’t block ads that are running on CTV because of the nature of CTV,” the buyer said. “There’s not anything you can do about it.” For reason both technical and financial, connected TV lacks the transparency of programmatic advertising on the open web, making it much easier for advertisers to inadvertently fund misinformation, according to conversations with half a dozen industry sources Adweek spoke with. Data illustrates this grim reality. Programmatic consultancy Jounce Media analyzed the supply and demand for media properties deemed deliberately deceptive by the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) as of March 2022. In connected TV, a small supply of misinformation providers accounts for a disproportionately large amount of ad spend. Media from the GDI exclusion list made up only 0.044% of the CTV supply, more than 1,300% less common than in the open web, but makes up 0.165% of total ad spend, meaning advertisers were over 100% more likely to spend money on misinformation in CTV than on the open web. Is it a commercial break for HGTV or Newsmax? They’re all within the same app.Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media As the industry lurches to add more automation, making sure the right tech parameters are in place is paramount to avoiding the pitfalls of programmatic advertising. “There’s a lack of consistency with what you can receive and what partners are able to share with you,” said Alex Stone, svp of advanced video and agency partnerships at Horizon Media. A structural lack of transparency On the open web, technology exists to scrape web pages and scan keywords for language that might be offensive to advertisers. But in connected TV, the nature of video makes this process trickier, coupled with an overall lack of consistency between kinds of inventory, making it hard for buyers to make informed decisions based purely on bid requests. "In the connected TV world, the signals are heavily distorted and fragmented,” said Ryan Eusanio, managing director of digital activation at Omnicom Media Group. Buyers have long wanted the process of buying connected TV to mirror that of linear, but publishers rarely share series or episode data with buyers. Sources said publishers are reluctant to share their data for fear of buyers cherry-picking their content. Another concern is with the Video Privacy Protection Act, a federal privacy law passed in 1988 that prohibits the disclosure of video rental records with personally identifiable information. “If you target [individuals] against the shows, there’s a lot of concerns you can breach the law, which is not a concern in traditional television,” where individual-level targeting is not possible, said Sean Buckley, chief revenue officer of Magnite, a tech company that helps CTV publishers sell their inventory. But even less granular data is regularly missing. Genre-level data is only available on average for less than 15% of bids, according to Field Garthwaite, CEO and founder of Iris.TV, a connected TV ad-tech company. That figure is based on data samplings over monthly periods in 2020 and 2021 that demand-side platforms shared with the firm. The first media buyer source said that even the most basic information—what CTV app an advertisement aired on—is sometimes unavailable to buyers, due to the convoluted nature of reselling and inconsistent reporting standards. More sellers, more problems Because buyers do not have granular or consistent bid-level data about connected TV media, it is impossible for them to programmatically exclude certain content with confidence, Eusanio said. One solution is to make it easier for platforms to speak the same language digitally. Iris.TV offers a contextual ID that allows buyers to target by certain content attributes. Using Iris.TV, advertisers get mediated access to publisher information, and publishers don’t have to enter sensitive data directly into the bidstream. But solutions like Iris.TV have yet to reach mass adoption. For now, marketers' best bet is often to carve out private deals with sellers, and negotiate brand safety standards, Buckley said, rather than bid in an open market as is common in the open web. “The buyer and the seller will agree on something that will preemptively refine the ad requests before it goes out the door,” Buckley said. “It’s already refined down to what the buyer is looking for.” Buckley says the majority of the connected TV market is transacted through private deals. But brand safety problems still persist, sources said, and private deals can create a false illusion of control. Private deals can occur with aggregators, like Amazon, Roku or an ad network, which are often contractually not allowed to disclose granular level data about the content they’re selling, making it harder for them to guarantee a buyer’s wishes. Jounce Media found 99% of bid requests for a CTV app publisher on the GDI's misinformation list are sold by aggregators, not the content owner. Still, aggregators can provide the largest scale, preferable for targeting individuals and frequency-capping, the first media-buying source said. Advertisers also cut deals with multichannel platforms like Sling TV or Pluto TV, known in the industry as vMVPDs, which have more granular data than resellers but do not necessarily make useful content data available to buyers. “Is it a commercial break for HGTV or Newsmax?” Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media, said. “They’re all within the same app." With upfront negotiations underway, multiple sources said buyers are asking for transparency and brand safety requirements baked into their contracts. “The sell-side is only going to provide it when buyers start demanding,” Eusanio said. Making Programmatic Work in Connected TV

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In Connected TV, Brand Safety Is Still a Goal, Not the Norm

Half a dozen industry sources say there are insufficient controls to prevent advertisers from funding misinformation

Catherine Perloff

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Catherine Perloff