Social media giants scrambling to clean up ad space

The fragile reputation of brands has got Facebook, Twitter and GroupM’s media company shining a bright light on all advertisements, making ads more accountable and rooting out abuse. Though most brands and companies that buy ads on social media platforms are legitimate, marketers have their own concerns about brand safety and refrain from being associated with companies that invite controversy.

GroupM’s media company Xaxis has a brand safety tool that will analyse content that could adversely affect a brand’s reputation. Even Twitter has made it easier to track all kinds of ads, and Facebook has initiated steps to bring on more transparency to ads.

FB scandal

“Facebook garnered a huge user base of nearly 2.2 billion, of which 240 million are from India,” said N Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, a data insights company. “Over time, the social media giant was no longer what it professed to be. It gathered and shared more intimate details with anyone wanting to promote their cause, product or viewpoint for a fee. The Cambridge Analytica issue is just one example and there are bound to be many more, with equally sinister motives or worse,” he said.

Pointing out that advertisers are “increasingly getting disillusioned with Facebook and Twitter as they are not being open and transparent about what data they are hiding or disclosing,” Darshan Bhatt, Director, GoQuest Digital Studios, a digital agency, said, “Lack of transparency was the primary reason behind the questionable involvement of Facebook in the last US presidential campaign on behalf of Russia. The resultant bad press and harsh criticism led to a conscious internal restructuring at Facebook in order to gain back and build user’s faith.”

Facebook said it is making advertising more ‘transparent’ by publishing information about the ads that firms are running on the social network site. It has added a new feature which enables users to see the ads any firm with a Facebook page is running on the site at that time, and to report any advertisements they believe are suspicious.

Twitter measures

Twitter, too, has unveiled an Ad Transparency Center, that lets users see the creative for all ad campaigns that have run within the last seven days from a specific handle.

Terming it a healthy decision, Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO at digital agency WATConsult, told BusinessLine , “It is a very good sign for digital media to see the largest platforms taking firm action against ad abuse. This will inspire marketers to trust digital media and invest more into it.”

Vidooly, a video marketing analytic platform, recently partnered Xaxis, GroupM’s programmatic media company, to launch a new AIbrand safety tool, that will analyse all YouTube content to ensure contextual safety for specific brand values, enabling the prevention of ad placement in (or adjacent to) pornography, violence, illegal acts, communal videos and other suggestive content which could adversely affect a brand’s reputation.

Nishant Radia, CMO and Co-Founder of Vidooly, said brand safety is a key challenge for marketers advertising online. “Recently in the US, around 300 brands were found advertising on YouTube channels promoting unsafe video propaganda. Advertisers have had to pause their video campaigns to secure the safety of their brands,” he said.

Transparency is among the first thing that trust building requires, said TRA’s Chandramouli, adding: “Zuckerberg, who built Facebook from his dorm, said in the hearing at the US Congress, that Facebook has become so complex that even he or his engineers cannot fully understand and know how the data gets used and by whom. If people know how their data is being used by Facebook, they are certain to make ‘setting’ choices within the Facebook platform that will prevent personal data usage, and in turn destroy Facebook’s only business model of advertising.”

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