What is Brand Safety and Brand Suitability?
Brand safety protects a brand’s reputation from harm by preventing ad campaign delivery against unsafe content for any monetization, which is achieved through measured controls. Safety is considered binary.
Brand suitability enables a brand to align or avoid content based on its unique and individual brand values using content qualifiers such as content, sentiment, and tone. Suitability is considered a sliding scale of risk.
Historically, Brand safety refers to whether content can be monetized. Brand suitability was introduced in 2018 through a partnership between the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and the Media Rating Council (MRC). Shortly after, the Brand Safety & Suitability Framework was further developed by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The current framework includes the IAB’s original brand safety floor as a cornerstone of the brand suitability framework. You can view the most recent content taxonomy and brand safety and suitability framework here (PDF).