Discover seven essential lessons from Brand Safety Summit Day 1, where industry leaders tackled evolving brand safety challenges, from AI-driven brand suitability to merging sustainability with ad performance.
Brand safety should not be about throwing up a wall, it should focus on building trust in every corner of the digital media and ad tech ecosystem.
That was the message from Day 1 of Brand Safety Summit New York. From smarter social media filters to sustainability strategies, each session laid out brand safety’s future, piece by piece. Here are seven pieces of that puzzle.
7 Bold Lessons on Brand Safety
Lesson1: Reimagining Brand Safety with Contextual Intelligence
Safety isn’t static—it’s contextual. And, keywords are no longer enough to protect brands. Today’s brand safety tools are still too blunt, over-blocking, misclassifying, and keeping consumers from discovering high-quality content, according to Jonah Goodhart Co-Founder, Mobian.
He says it’s time to reimagine brand safety tech so that it dives deeper, reading tone, sentiment, and context. “The tools we have today don’t recognize nuance,” he said. Imagine brand safety tech that knows the difference between “Taylor Swift kicking off a world tour” and “Taylor Swift kicking someone.” Blocking without nuance and context is no longer acceptable.
Lesson 2: $10.8B Saved, But the War Rages On
Rachel Nyswander Thomas, Chief Operating Officer of TAG brought out the big numbers, sharing that $10.8 billion was saved from fraudsters. That’s real progress. But as she reminded us, the battle against fraud is anything but over. “Fraud will never fully disappear,” Nyswander Thomas said. “The challenge is to keep our defenses agile, adapting as fraudsters shift tactics.”
Since TAG first launched, certified channels have kept fraud under 1%, a vast improvement from earlier figures. But vigilance is key. Tools like ads.txt and sellers.json still need wider adoption to close the gaps. The takeaway? Every dollar counts in the fight against ad fraud and any small oversight can lead to big losses.
Lesson 3: Smarter Social Media Safety = The Power of Relevance
Phil Cowdell, Chief Strategy Officer, Channel Factory reminded us not to think of brand safety as avoiding the “bad stuff.” Brand safety is about finding the good stuff, the content that’s both relevant and resonant.
Cowdell highlighted the need to shift from basic keyword blocking towards more nuanced relevance, showing how diverse representation in media planning isn’t just socially responsible but drives business growth.
“Half of P&G’s growth in the past three years has come from audiences that were once excluded,” he explained. “This isn’t tokenism—it’s good business.” Brands should run away from the keyword mentality that drives them towards avoidance and instead run towards embracing relevance, diversity, and ultimately growth.
Lesson 4: Navigating CTV’s Brand Safety Maze and Moving Transparency Beyond the App
CTV ad dollars keep flowing in, but advertisers have found themselves in a maze of fragmented standards and limited transparency. Julian Zilberbrand, Principal, Ivey Milton Consultants, who led a no-nonsense discussion on this growing field, pointed out the transparency issues with classifying CTV content. “The real challenge in CTV isn’t just knowing where an ad appears but understanding the context of the content it’s paired with,” he said.
Mario Diez, CEO, Peer39 added that this transparency gap has created a ‘have and have-not’ divide, with major platforms offering some visibility while newer FAST channels struggle to keep up. “Brands need consistency. Until we get that, the CTV space will continue to feel fragmented,” Diez said. In CTV, safety should not only come at the surface level, it needs to be embedded deep, in every frame and flicker.
Lesson 5: AI Innovations Redefining Brand Suitability
When machines and minds meet, we learned, brand suitability no longer has to be a blunt tool weaponized against news. News Corp and illuma showed how AI can get brand safety out of the keyword rut and into a more nuanced, balanced realm that supports news. “We built innovations to support publishers,” Ryan McBride, Chief Strategy Officer, illuma explained.
The tech’s approach to AI-driven classification ensures quality content is accurately assessed and remains brand-safe and monetizable. It’s the difference between classifying Rihanna’s Super Bowl setlist as mayhem when it’s actually just music. “Our AI can understand that context, enabling more reach for publishers and more scale for brands,” McBride shared.
David Rowley, VP of Revenue Technology at News Corp echoed McBride’s sentiment, sharing that News Corp saw a 16% increase in monetizable safe content. “In sports, we’re seeing 20% higher accuracy,” he noted, “and beauty and skincare have a 25% boost in classification accuracy”—all thanks to a more nuanced approach that keeps high-quality content open to ads.
Lesson 6: Less Carbon, More Consciousness: Merging Brand Safety with Sustainability
Brian O’Kelley, co-founder and CEO, Scope3, and Martin Bryan, Global Chief Sustainability Officer, IPG Mediabrands, highlighted the environmental impact of ad tech. Beyond digital impressions, we’re talking about the actual energy footprint each impression leaves behind.
Every ad served—from data exchanges to bidding processes—drains resources, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Ad tech’s carbon footprint isn’t small. Data centers and programmatic ad calls create real-world energy costs.
O’Kelley urged brands to rethink ROI with carbon impact in mind, advocating for ad placements that are both effective and energy-efficient. He explained that reducing wasted impressions isn’t just good for the planet, it can improve ad performance as well, turning carbon awareness into a strategic advantage.
Many ad impressions are simply wasted energy offering no value to brands or consumers. Reducing these unnecessary impressions could significantly cut carbon emissions across the ad tech landscape.
In agreement, Bryan noted that sustainability practices aren’t just about feel-good branding—they’re a long-term investment in a brand’s health and consumer trust. He called for a “return on carbon” metric that would make brands accountable for their ad spend and the energy used in serving their ads.
Lesson 7: Transparency, Authenticity & the Speed of Culture
The buzzword for this panel was authenticity, now a crucial component of brand safety, as aligning ad placements with brand values ensures trust and credibility in every consumer interaction.
Alex Stone from Horizon Media, Marissa Price from Sightly, Elijah Harris from IPG Mediabrands, and moderator Matthew Katz explored how brands to stay real in a world that moves faster than ever. “Authenticity means different things to different brands,” Katz noted. “For some, it’s about societal impact. For others, it’s about staying true to their core audience.”
He talked about how brands used to be reluctant to engage on platforms like Reddit, but now they’re leaning in, meeting audiences on their terms. This shift shows how brands are coming to terms with what it means to be authentic, engaging in open, transparent dialogue where audiences feel most at home.
“It’s not enough to look authentic; brands need to live it—through every decision, every ad, every partnership,” Harris added. One beauty brand took this to heart when facing controversy involving a brand ambassador. Rather than stepping back, they leaned in, hosting a livestream event to address the situation head-on. The result? A direct, transparent connection with audiences that reinforced trust instead of avoiding difficult conversations.
“We’re closer now than ever to making authenticity actionable,” Stone explained. For example, aligning CTV content with local cultural moments allows brands to reach audiences in organic and intentional ways, moving beyond generic keyword blocks to targeted relevance.
Brand safety is becoming more about consistency and alignment for brands. That’s from creative to context, and from purpose to profit.
Building Bridges, Not Walls
Brand safety isn’t about huddling behind a firewall—it’s empowering advertisers and publishers to move forward confidently. Day 1 of the Brand Safety Summit showcased the conversation’s evolution, calling for safety that builds bridges, and not just blocks risks. Today’s brand safety should be about relevance, transparency, and purpose.
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