Brand suitability

You can use brand suitability targeting to make sure you only purchase inventory that meets or exceeds your brand suitability requirements.

On this page

• Brand safety vs Brand suitability
• Brand suitability settings
• Set brand safety targeting for an advertiser
• Brand suitability controls
• Bypass brand suitability settings for deals
• Use third-party brand safety technology

Brand safety vs Brand suitability

Brand Safety: Automatically filter out inappropriate or harmful content that no advertiser, regardless of their vertical or preference, ever wants to run on.

Brand Suitability: Allow advertisers to opt-in or opt-out of traffic that some advertisers find acceptable while others don’t. This means that brand suitability content is mutually exclusive of brand safety content, ensuring all brand suitability content is brand safe, as non-brand safe content has been filtered out by Brand Safety.

Brand suitability settings

Brand suitability controls let you set exclusions that apply across your entire Display & Video 360 advertiser. At the advertiser level, you can select content categories, other content types, or excluded themes and they’ll automatically apply to all of your line items.

Considerations for YouTube instant deals

Advertiser-level brand suitability targeting changes will immediately impact the serving of existing Programmatic Guaranteed and Non-Guaranteed YouTube instant deal line items, with the exception of YouTube share of voice line items. Changes that result in more restrictive serving may lead to underdelivery of line items, so it's recommended to reforecast those line items after making advertiser-level changes.

YouTube sponsorships (Share of Voice)

When you book YouTube Sponsorships via Programmatic Guaranteed instant deals, most advertiser-level suitability exclusions are automatically bypassed.

Since sponsorships target specific content or creators, applying broad account-level exclusions is often redundant and may limit your campaign’s ability to meet Share of Voice (SOV) goals.

Content categories will be automatically adjusted to "Moderate" if the advertiser level is currently set to "Limited". If the advertiser level is configured for "Moderate" or "Maximum" categories, these settings will remain in effect and be respected. The following advertiser-level brand suitability controls are bypassed for sponsorship line items:

• Content categories
• Content theme exclusions
• Other content types (livestream or embeds)
• Keyword exclusions
• Channels and YouTube URLs

Set brand suitability targeting for an advertiser

Digital content labels and sensitive categories can also be excluded for an advertiser. Use these exclusions to help set a base level of brand suitable targeting that will apply to all current and future campaigns, insertion orders, and line items.

Here's how:

Your advertiser can also block a channel of apps or URLs to prevent ads from serving near unsuitable content. Learn more About channels.

Brand suitability controls

You can use the following advertiser-level brand suitability controls.

Content categories

The brand suitability settings described below allow you to control where your ads appear. You can choose from 3 main brand suitability levels:

1. Maximum inventory: This level optimizes for maximum reach.
   • All line items use this category by default. This option lets you show ads across all inventory that meets our standards for monetization. This option may be an appropriate choice for brands that want maximum access to the full breadth of inventory eligible for ads, including, for example, content that have strong profanity in the context of comedy or a documentary, or excessive violence as featured in video games.
2. Moderate inventory: This level is a good balance between reach and brand suitability.
   • This option lets you show ads across a wide range of content that’s appropriate for most brands, such as popular music videos, documentaries, and movie trailers. The content you can show ads on is based on advertiser-friendly content guidelines that take into account, for example, the strength or frequency of profanity, or the appropriateness of subject matter like sensitive events. Ads won’t show, for example, on content with repeated strong profanity, strong sexual content, or graphic violence.
3. Limited inventory: This level provides the most restrictive brand suitability, suitable for very sensitive brands.
   • This option lets you show ads on a reduced range of content that’s appropriate for brands with particularly strict guidelines around inappropriate language and sexual suggestiveness - above and beyond what advertiser-friendly content guidelines address. The content accessible in this sensitive category meet heightened requirements, especially for inappropriate language and sexual suggestiveness. For example, your ads will be excluded from showing on some of YouTube’s most popular music videos and other pop culture content.

Bypass brand suitability settings for deals

Brand suitability controls allow you to apply a single configuration to all your buys, including open auction and deals, at the advertiser level. However, brand suitability settings sometimes cause pacing or delivery issues for deal traffic. To prevent this, you can bypass all advertiser-level brand suitability settings for specific deals. This bypass gives you the ability to maintain your brand suitability standards for open auction buys while allowing more flexibility for deals.

To bypass brand suitability settings for specific deals:

• At the advertiser level, navigate to Targeting rules under “Advertiser settings”.
• In the “Brand suitability” section, click the pencil icon.
• Under “Advanced settings” in the “Deal exemption” section, select Exempt selected deals from brand suitability settings.
• Click Select deals, and choose which deals you want to exempt.
• Click Apply.
• Click Save.

Limitations

• The bypass applies to any deal, including Programmatic Guaranteed, in non reservation type Display, Video, Connected TV, and Audio line items. It doesn’t apply to Auction Packages, Inventory Packages, YouTube, Demand Gen, or other Google-owned and operated inventory.
• For a selected deal, all brand suitability settings are bypassed. You can’t choose to bypass only specific settings.
• This feature doesn’t bypass other targeting settings like keywords, categories, or app and URL exclusions.

Use third-party brand suitability technology

You can use third-party verification technology to enforce brand safety thresholds for impressions you purchase.

1. Open an advertiser in Display & Video 360, and click the insertion order you want to edit.

2. Once you've opened an insertion order, you can set media quality requirements as part of the insertion order's default targeting or you can set media quality requirements in the targeting of individual line items. Either way, you can find third-party pre-bid verification settings in Targeting Brand suitability Other verification services.

3. Once you've opened the Media Quality settings, select a verification service provider:

   • Integral Ad Science

     About Integral Ad Science's brand suitability settings
     • Ad Fraud Prevention: Exclude impressions if there's a risk (moderate or high) that a website or the advertisements appearing on it are associated with illegal or deceptive activity, such as click fraud or impression fraud.
     • Context Control: Content Avoidance: Enter the ID that you received from Integral Ad Science to exclude a specific custom segment. You can also block unrated URLs from being targeted.
     • Context Control: Targeting: Enter the ID that you received from Integral Ad Science to include a specific custom segment for targeting.
     • Sensitive content types: Unrateable, Adult, Alcohol, Illegal Downloads, Drugs, Hate Speech (desktop and mobile web only), Offensive Language, Violence, and Gambling (mobile-app only).
     • Unrateable: Impressions that are unrateable can't be described as being brand safe or not. Typically, unrateable impressions are associated with anonymous inventory (impressions where the page URL isn't "transparent" or shared with buyers), ad server or ad network URLs, and IP addresses.
     • Viewability: How viewable an impression is, relative to other impressions. You can choose the average viewability rate you want.
     • Limitations:
       • Connected TV (CTV): Only the Ad Fraud Prevention, Brand suitability, Context Control Avoidance, and Quality Sync brand safety settings of Integral Ad Science (IAS) are available.

     For more information, contact DV360support@integralads.com

   • DoubleVerify

     About DoubleVerify's brand suitability settings
     • Authentic Brand Safety: Create a custom brand safety profile using Authentic Brand suitability controls in the DoubleVerify platform. To use the profile, enter its segment ID.
     • Avoid bidding on apps by rating: Block inventory based on an app's age rating, or only bid on apps with a certain star rating or higher.
     • Brand safety categories: Block inventory based on DoubleVerify's brand safety avoidance tiers (high-risk or medium-risk), or one or more of the 20+ avoidance categories.
     • Viewability: Target inventory based on how viewable the impression is, relative to all impressions, using the IAB definition of viewability ("Target web and app inventory to maximize IAB viewable rate"). You can also target inventory based on the 100% viewable duration of the average view of an ad ("Target web and app inventory to maximize 100% viewable duration").
     • Fraud & Invalid Traffic: Target inventory based on the historical percentage of fraud and invalid traffic.

     For more information, contact programmaticsales@doubleverify.com

   • Scope3 (formerly Adloox)

     About Scope3 (formerly Adloox)'s brand suitability settings
     • Brand Safety & Suitability Content Filtration Categories: Filter out non-brand safe and non-brand suitable content based on the GARM framework across URL, app, domain and subdomain levels for both display and video on open web inventories.
     • Content Categories: Opt out of unsafe segments.
       • Adult: Pornography, nudity
       • Adult Soft: Sexual content, partial nudity
       • Fraud: Botnets, malwares, fake sites, ad stacking
       • Tendentious: Extreme religion, controversial content
       • Discriminatory: Content discriminatory towards race, religion, gender, age
       • Violent/Weapons: Content with scenes of pain, violence, death, or offering the sale of guns, bombs, and weapons
       • Alcohol/Drugs: Content selling or promoting the use of alcohol, or illegal drugs
     • Fraud & Invalid Traffic Filtration: Filter out invalid traffic and fraud across URL, app, domain and subdomain levels, leveraging Scope3 (formerly Adloox) data and measurement for both display and video on open web inventories.
     • Viewability Targeting Categories for Display: Target the top percentage of DV360's inventory based on IAB's viewed rate for display and video.
     • Limitations:
       • Connected TV (CTV): Only the Brand Safety & Suitability Content Filtration Categories, Fraud & Invalid Traffic Filtration, and Content Categories brand safety settings of Scope3 (formerly Adloox) are available.

     For more information, contact dv360@scope3.com

4. Click Done once you're done configuring all of the above information.

Troubleshooting

Use the "Video Rating Tier" section of the Troubleshooter for your line items to verify the number of impressions that came in for each video rating tier versus the video rating tier being used in the line item’s targeting. You can use this information to adjust your targeting as needed. Learn more

Limitations

• Audio inventory isn't supported by third-party brand safety targeting. First-party brand safety content labels for audio are derived from app- and site-level information, rather than content-level information.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)