For over a year now, Facebook has been affected by controversy regarding brand safety of its advertisers whose ads ended up in pages with inappropriate or objectionable content. For brands that spend heavenly amounts in advertising on social sites like Facebook this is nothing but an outrageous instant of being let down by a platform on which they depended for their growth momentum.
It all began with a stern warning by P&G (Proctor & Gamble) to Facebook and Google in particular to figure out a way and ensure that its ads didn’t appear on pages with inappropriate or objectionable content.
A number of new brand safety features have been announced by Facebook as a measure against ‘fake news’ providers, under mounting pressure to pacify irate mega advertisers who began threatening to pull out all advertising from the site. The brand safety tools that Facebook announced to address this issue will allow advertisers to see where their ads are likely to appear before they launch a campaign. This will include placement and category opt-out lists, which will allow advertisers better control over the placement of their ads in pages with content on both Facebook itself as well as placements bought via its third-party Audience Network.
The Facebook update also includes an analytics tool which allows advertisers to see where their ads have appeared post-campaign. It will also include ads that will run on its ad breaks, instant articles, branded content, and audience network offerings, as part of media space purchases. Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s vp of global marketing solutions, said, “This is an area where you’re going to see us make ongoing progress on and ultimately we care deeply about the health of the ecosystem on our platform¬—that includes publishers, our consumers that use our products and advertisers. We want to ensure that advertisers feel confident in their investment on our platform and brand safety and what content ads are running against has been an area of concern.”