What are the most effective ways to use content analytics for brand safety?

Analyze content for keywords and topics associated with potential brand risks like hate speech, violence, or misinformation. Identify audience demographics on content hosting platforms to ensure alignment with your target audience. Track brand mentions and sentiment analysis within content comments to monitor brand perception and address potential issues.

Brand safety is paramount when you are looking for CTRs and conversions, improve and maintain customer loyalty, contribute to a brand's overall online credibility and visibility, thereby positively influencing search engine rankings, and winning quality Ads and thereby improving revenue. In my experience, I have seen adverse effect of carrying content on the website that goes against brand's inherent values. Recalling a particular event, where a news website carried a story that unintentionally hurt some sentiments, and the website saw backlash in the form of angry social media posts, many users unfollowed social page, negative hashtags and eventually drop in traffic. Recovery from such situations is often difficult.

The most effective utilization of content analytics for brand safety entails deploying sophisticated AI algorithms to continuously monitor online content, employing keyword and sentiment analysis to detect potential risks, implementing customizable filters and thresholds to flag concerning content in real-time, and integrating comprehensive reporting mechanisms to track and analyze brand safety metrics. By leveraging content analytics proactively, brands can safeguard their reputation, uphold brand integrity, and mitigate risks associated with harmful or inappropriate content across digital channels.

Content analytics is essential to monitor, assess, and improve performance. Its like having the headlights on while driving in pitch dark road and also using GPS trackers, monitoring speedometer, keeping track of fuel levels, ensuring the engine coolant is not overheating, etc. This would ensure that you reach your destination safe and on time. What I have found useful is to create regular reports and alerts followed up with analysis that helps you understand how your content strategy is performing, whether you are seeing desired results or any course correction is required, identify outlier incidents that may affect traffic (either positive or negative) so that you have a control on the outcome.

There are various tools available (both free and paid) for brand safety. In my experience, we can apply first level checks on CMS tools to ensure brand safety review before publishing the content. Google Analytics (or any other tool) helps monitor content performance and how it is promoted by Search and Social platforms, etc. Further, Search Console tools helps analyse page, keyword and search appearance level performance and provide insights into what kind of keywords are associated with our pages and brand. For e.g., if the top keywords on Search console are related to explicit content, violence, gambling, etc., then this should immediately prompt a change in SEO strategy (regardless of what the landing pages reveal).

Social media is a great source of information to improve your brand safety. Social media sentiment analysis in particular helps with analyzing online content to understand public perception and emotions toward a brand, product, or service. It helps businesses gauge consumer sentiment, identify trends, and make informed decisions. We can collect and analyze textual data to determine how a brand is perceived. Machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) are often employed for accurate sentiment detection, utilizing datasets like tweets for analysis. This empowers businesses to adapt strategies based on public opinion, enhancing overall brand management.

Content analytics for brand safety involves the following steps: 1. Create and document content strategy and clearly identify KPIs and benchmarks. 2. Decide on tools and procedures you will use to collect, report and analyse content performance. 3. Deploy and monitor Real-time content reporting tools to monitor, experiment and improve content offerings. 4. Regularly monitor reports and deep dive into any deviation from desired outcomes. 5. Be agile and course correct whenever required. 6. Monitor user preferences, trends, competition offerings and their performance. 7. Always fact check and verify information before publishing content. 8. Design and implement checks and alerts to ensure brand safety before publishing any content

Smart contracts, powered by blockchain technology, offer a promising future for brand safety by automating and enforcing agreements for ad placements and content partnerships. They ensure that ads only appear in pre-approved, contextually appropriate environments by encoding the terms directly into the contract. This minimizes the risk of ads appearing alongside damaging content, as the blockchain's transparency and immutability provide a secure, verifiable way to maintain brand integrity, making the advertising ecosystem safer and more trustworthy.