A look at the implications of brand misplacement with particular reference to digital advertising and the role of the PR practitioner as reputation guardian and in mitigating risk

1. Fake news, ethics and
professionalism
Sarah Hall - @hallmeister
CIPR President-Elect
Clare Lee - @therainhasgone
Account Director, SD Advertising

2. Introductions – Sarah Hall
Agency owner, CIPR President-Elect 2017 and
Chartered public relations practitioner
Editor of the industry-wide, global community
project #FuturePRoof aimed at asserting PR's value
as a management discipline and the role it plays in
achieving organisational success
Awarded the Sir Stephen Tallent’s medal 2014 by
the CIPR for exceptional achievement in PR practice
Digital marketing certificate from Google, MA in
Marketing from Northumbria University’s Newcastle Business School and BA
(Hons) in French and Media from Leeds University

3. Introductions – Clare Lee
Vast experience of project managing media
planning and buying campaigns for large scale
organisations
Strategic and tactical thinker, skilled in constructively
challenging ideas and suggesting new, innovative
communication strategies that deliver real results
Media planning & buying specialist
Campaigns for NHS North East, The Alnwick Gardens,
Alnwick Castle, English Heritage, Tyne & Wear Metro, Nexus, Newcastle
Theatre Royal, Baltic, Sage Gateshead, Durham Council and Go North East

4. Tonight’s agenda
• Brand guardians vs ad misplacement
• What’s it to me?
• Brand safety – how digital advertising now works
• Ethics and media owners
• Fake news
• Reputational issues
• Brand purpose
• Rebuilding trust
• Any questions

5. Ad misplacement
Ad misplacement nothing new
Meet Maria – missing child in Greece,
introduced to me by a 30 second Schwartz
tea time ad in 2013
Ad was placed using blind networking based
on behavioural and contextual targeting Image taken from Daily Mail
The risk attached to pre-roll video before news items depending on story is
now reduced but display ads still regularly appear next to distressing editorial
content and TV ads appear in programmes showing violence, drugs, racial
hatred etc
Much greater sensitivity to this online than in the paper / on the television

6. Ad misplacement
Brand safety discussion reignited
following large scale YouTube and
Google issue where adverts were placed
next to contentious political and
religious content
Advertising pulled by major players
including the BBC, Marks & Spencer,
Lloyds, L’Oreal and HBSC until new
checks in place
Google response: changes to controls; investment into advertising policy
enforcement; proactive monitoring of content to check whether appropriate
BUT 400 hours of video content uploaded per hour - major challenge

7. What’s it to me?
If you’re using the PESO model, you need to be aware of this; most
campaigns now have a paid element
Potential reputational problem to be factored into issues planning
Implications for the wider industry

8. Digital advertising brand safety
• Behavioural, contextual and programmatic advertising
• How to avoid brand risk/damage as a media agency/client
• Transparency - on where budget is being spent, performance, rationale
for media spend

9. Three cornerstones of accountability
• Ad click fraud - Kickback/rebates fraudulent impressions delivered from
deliberate activity that prevents the proper delivery of the ads to the right
people at the right time in the right place
• Brand risk/safety – Impressions that are flagged on pages that pose
levels of harm to brand image/reputation through association
(adult/alcohol/hate speech/illegal downloads/drugs/offensive
language/violence and controversial content)
• Viewability / transparency – Media Rating Council (MRC) a display
impression is viewable if at least 50% of the pixels are on screen for at
least one second. A video ad impression is if 50% of pixels are on screen
for at least two seconds

10. Digital Advertising brand safety

11. Digital Advertising brand safety

12. Media owners and ethics
YouTube channels must now reach 10,000 views before ads can be
shown on their videos. Once that threshold is reached, channels will
undergo reviews for acceptance into the YouTube Partner Program
Also as part of the brand safety improvements, default settings will change
to automatically exclude ads from showing on potentially objectionable
content/key words
Trinity Mirror removes all ads from site after major terrorist attacks and
against key red flag words
Rocket Fuel has a dedicated brand safety team with full-time compliance
officers, and incorporates several layers to ensure all campaigns run
in brand safe environments

13. Media owners and ethics
Rocket Fuel:
• Network level and campaign specific blacklist filters that are updated
daily (up to 30,000+ sites). Bid requests from these blocked sites are
rejected in real-time
• Integration with Peer39 & IAS to score hundreds of thousands of
domains based on contextually unsafe keywords and images
• Proprietary technology built directly into Rocket Fuel's platform to
identify potential low quality clicks, flagging and blocking bots, and
other suspicious user activity
• Rocket Fuel is one of 29 companies to be certified under the IAB’s
updated quality assurance guidelines, aimed at
ensuring brand safety and combatting piracy
• Immediately rejects approx 1/3 of all bid requests

14. Fake news
Content and ad placement ever more
challenging in the context of fake news
Growing phenomena due to technology
and perception confirmation bias
But fake news actually as old as time
Today two main motivations:
- Profit gain
- Propaganda; to influence public
opinion or an election result

15. Reputational issues
Brands need to be risk aware and embed
it into their crisis planning
Brand purpose needs to be revisited;
values need to form basis of all marketing
activity – see @stopfundinghate campaign
Brands need a role in society outside of
profit generation to maintain legitimacy
Follow best practice: Internet Advertising Bureau display ad guides to
enhance the creative approach, speed sign off and enhance brand trust

16. Rebuilding trust
The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals largest ever drop in trust
across the institutions of government, business, media and NGOs, with
trust in media at an all time low in 17 countries
Not in the interest of news sites nor brands to propagate lies
Brands MUST work with Google, Facebook and others to find solutions,
maintain momentum
Question is less about PR and advertising but more about highly
contentious content and how to prevent this being posted online
Consumer education piece critical; how to identify fake news (what role
can brands play in this?) and how the advertising process works to
mitigate reputational risk (role for media / gov?)