IAS to Provide Brand Safety and Fraud Protection for LinkedIn Audience Network

The new integration is an expansion of the agreement IAS had with LinkedIn Audience Network when they began working together in late 2019 and represents how the platform is looking to mature its ad platform.

Advertisers can use LinkedIn Audience Network to expand delivery of sponsored content to third-party publishers’ applications and websites, reaching their target audiences beyond LinkedIn’s feed and within established bid and budget parameters.

The integration will incorporate IAS’ predictive technology and real-time data to ensure that campaigns activated via LinkedIn Audience Network are brand safe and protect them from fraud, said IAS CEO Lisa Utzschneider.

“It’s great to see another major tech platform leaning in on providing brand safety,” Utzschneider said. “As all of us are living through this unprecedented time and more and more marketers are increasingly learning the importance of brand safety and brand suitability, it’s important to see another major platform step in.”

There were already several quality checks in place for LinkedIn Audience Network, such as the ability to block specific IAB categories, domains and apps to prevent their ads from appearing there and on all publisher website domains and apps that are considered controversial or offensive. LinkedIn Audience Network ads are also only ever served on a manually curated whitelist of suitable partner properties.

LinkedIn said it also regularly monitors engagement and activity on its partners’ apps in order to combat fraud and prioritize delivery on higher-quality placements.

The network’s partner publishers provide quality checks, including honoring viewable impressions only for cost-per-click campaigns, so advertisers are only charged when an actual click occurs.

Those publishers also integrate with third-party verification partners that assist with ad viewability, promote brand safety and combat fraud. But the integration with IAS will take those quality checks one step further and will automatically filter out high-risk inventory before bids are even placed for campaigns on the network.

The pre-bid integration has the ability for marketers to achieve up to a three times increase in conversions, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions senior director of product management Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan said in a statement.

“As the publishing landscape has evolved, marketers have come to recognize the importance of finding a trusted partner that can ensure that their ads are being served on brand safe publishers,” Sivaramakrishnan added.