Brand safety refers to a strategy that businesses put together to make sure that no online ads or popups appear on or in articles, websites, or videos that conflict with the core image of a brand, as well as its vision and mission.
A study published on Marketing Dive says that around 75% of brands are affected by brand safety, and only 26% of the affected brands take action.
Many brands lost 13% of their revenue in order to compromise brand safety online. Even the biggest brands in the industry, like Heinz, Rado, and Mercedes, face the brand safety issue.
The ill-placed ads associated with their content on websites are irrelevant to them and go against the brand guidelines, resulting in a negative image of them in the market.
The affected brands pulled their marketing campaigns from the advertising environment to save their brand image, but there's still one place that goes unseen – their website.
You may have a great infrastructure that ensures no one can hack your brand website, and you are also sure that your customer data is safe – right from the details of their account to transactions they make; but what about the security of your brand's website to the consumer end?
An online consumer always has many browser extensions and website apps installed. This practice makes them more productive, or helps them compare product prices across different retailers online. But the thing is, these extensions do more than what they are supposed to – we’re talking about adware.
The primary step to brand safety is to identify the content that has the ability to harm your business image in the market. It usually varies from brand to brand and depends on the consumer market they're appealing to. Blocking out the negative categories and tweaking your brand's advertising campaigns to not display up for them is not enough in order to block them from your website.
Here are some things you do to protect your brand website on consumers' devices:
It will become easier for you to understand the shopping behavior of your shopper and the distractions they are exposed to if you know the category most shoppers usually fall into.
Price comparison tools are extensions that inject adware into a consumer's browser. It results in a few distractions like popping up on your website – competitor ads, price comparisons, intrusive pop-ups, video ads, and adult content.
There are usually five types of online shoppers that all retailers see in their online stores – experienced, price-sensitive, latest product, ready-to-purchase, and best product shoppers. All these online shoppers have distinct characteristics and show distinct behavior on the site.
For example, an experienced shopper always looks for a seamless shopping experience. Starting from finding products they want to purchase, they want every step without any hurdle or roadblock.
When we talk about a price-sensitive shoppers, they make compromises on the experience and focus on getting the best deal in a reduced cart total.
Every second day, scores of injected adware strains exist in the digital landscape. As the number of digital or online platforms is growing daily, it is becoming difficult or even impossible to track all the adware strains and easily identify them.
But there is always an escape. With the correct use of machine learning, we can now scan consumers' browsers in real time for adware strains. We can easily identify the distractions and disable them before they interrupt online shoppers with non-useful or irrelevant content or take them away to your competitor's site.
When it comes to protecting your audience, you need to add a simple code line to your eCommerce website or store. It ensures that it doesn't matter what device your online consumer is accessing your store from; they will remain shielded from any possible adware that their browser might inject.
When you keep adware away from the browser of your consumer, you ensure that now no content that affects your brand vision or image is displayed on your website.
Brand saftey requires a few things to look in-detail to get the outcome-oriented results. If not done rightly, brand safety can impact your brand image and core values.
So, give a seamless shopping experience to your online customers by eliminating inappropriate ads,pop-ups and fraud deals on your web page. You can easily get browser plugin mitigation online using digital solutions like Conversion Guard to improve brand safety. Never make compromise on it, as it is all about getting potential conversions which results in more sales.
