Media Resource: 4As Advertiser Protection Bureau

The 4As Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB) committee is composed of leading buy-side advertising and media holding companies. It was established in 2018 to help combat harmful content and to address the industry’s most challenging issues relating to brand safety and suitability. This group has helped create industry definitions for impression counting and has shaped the industry’s frameworks around brand safety and suitability.

Take the Agency Pledge of Advertising Assurance

The topic of Brand Safety is a key issue on everyone’s minds. Brand Safety has various meaning for different constituents but covers the broad range of Piracy, Fraud, and Malware… Contextual brand safety… and issues related to consumer privacy/preferences. The Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB) was created amongst the Agency community to address problems in the area contextual brand safety –or brands appearing next to questionable content –from illegal content to fake news. Mounting evidence suggests consumer confidence is at risk too. Not only do these occurrences negatively affect brands; they impact consumer sentiment around brands. The right alignment of brands and environments is critical to a healthy marketplace for both brand and consumers.Achieving the best possible alignment requires brands, agencies, publishers and platforms to work together to provide guidance on what content is monetizeable for various brand audiences based on judgment versus that which is not. When we adequately address this range of content and create ways to identify the right content to match the range of brand values and keep consumers safe, we will have achieved Advertising Assurance.

Digital technologies provide intricate and evolving methods for connecting content with consumers. Furthermore, seemingly unlimited access to data enables more precise targeting protocols and identification of engagement metrics, breeding complexity that invites risk. The industry must work together to use technology and vigilance to mitigate that risk -where there is potential for harm. Still, despite these efforts, we can be sure that bad actors will continually find methods to disrupt those connections, making brand safety a continuous reality.

As the APB, we are committed to being a consistent and effective voice to help protect the brands we work with and their relationships with consumers. We pledge to continuously strive to foster balanced advertising environments where brands and consumers can have a value exchange with trust. To that end, we will work for stronger brand safety practices that respect consumers, and the brands who work so hard to earn their trust and preference.

Importantly, as Americans, we believe in free speech. It is a key tenet and a core principle of our U.S. Constitution. However, as the APB, and with respect to advertising environments, we also believe that the idea of free speech should be aligned with lawful and respectful treatment of key controversial content areas as it relates to monetization of advertising inventory. In this light, monetization of inventory to consumers should be treated as a publisher privilege –not a right.

• Keep consumers safe, and respect their right to avoid content which may not be consistent with their values
• Keep brands safe, as brands too, have values consistent with their target consumers.
• We advocate a zero tolerance approach to brand and consumer safety violations, while acknowledging that the safe guards we institute within the digital ecosystem will continue to evolve.

We give you our assurance that we will work towards meeting these goals and will work with industry constituents to achieve a balanced environment for brands and consumers. Together, as industry leaders, we commit to collaboratively and openly working to establish and maintain best practices for the ecosystem and to continue to monitor in this evergreen challenge.

Agency Commitment:

1. Work with advertisers and publishers to drive an ecosystem that preserves and prioritizes a positive consumer experience by respecting consumer choice and privacy
2. Work with advertisers to shield brands and their reputations, among consumers and the public at large, by aiding in the development and deployment of the MRC Brand Safety Guidelines -Supplement to the Ad Verification Guidelines
3. Work with advertisers to develop a Brand Safety/Suitability Framework to express safety/risk [independent choice/controls] to enable brands and agencies to make content choices appropriate with brand values
4. Educate the industry on the tradeoffs of content choices across the Safety/Suitability Framework and assist advertisers in weighing risk management against desired communication goals
   • Offer continued guidance in support of establishing monetization guidelines and adjust the Framework as needed with respect to an evolving landscape
5. Work with advertisers to develop Safety/Suitability choices at appropriate levels of risk based on individual/corporate brand values