The Mindset Shift Behind Stronger Brand Safety and Suitability Strategies

Key Takeaways:

• The brand safety environment has changed: Volatile online spaces, AI-generated content, and reduced platform moderation have combined to raise the risk profile for brands.
• Brand safety failures are a performance issue, not just a reputational one: Content adjacency problems and programmatic waste directly erode campaign outcomes, with lower-performing advertisers wasting more than two-thirds of their programmatic spend.
• Leaders must shift their thinking around brand safety and suitability: Treating brand safety and suitability as strategic considerations built into media planning from the start—rather than boxes checked after campaigns go live—is what separates leaders from the rest.

Brand safety and suitability look very different today than they did just a few years ago, and most advertisers’ strategies haven’t kept up with the new pace.

Online spaces increasingly characterized by harmful and polarizing content, the proliferation of AI-generated media, reduced platform moderation, and the growing complexity of digital advertising have combined to raise the brand risk profile for advertisers.

Closing that gap requires a mindset shift from leaders. Instead of treating brand safety as a box to check once campaigns are live, brand safety and suitability must be approached as a strategic consideration built into media planning from the start.

How the Brand Safety Environment Has Changed for Advertisers

The brand safety and suitability environment has evolved considerably in recent years. The open web has grown more volatile, with offensive language, controversial content, and hate speech on the rise. Just between 2024 and 2025, the share of offensive content online rose by 72%. Considering that 64% of global consumers say the genre of content surrounding an ad influences how they perceive it, the increasing hostility of online spaces creates significant content adjacency issues for advertisers.

The emergence of generative AI and subsequent proliferation of AI-generated content online has exacerbated such concerns. A 2025 Basis study found that a full 100% of marketers and advertisers agree that AI presents a brand safety and misinformation risk, and 53% of media experts in the US cite advertisements’ proximity to gen AI content as a top media challenge this year.

Social media has grown particularly contentious, especially as major social platforms have rolled back their content moderation policies in recent years. Close to two-thirds of marketers running campaigns on social feel concerned about the brand suitability of those ad placements.

April Weeks, Chief Media Officer at Basis, says the combination of these and other factors has raised the stakes for brand safety and suitability. “The risk has increased,” says Weeks, “and to adapt, advertisers must treat brand safety and suitability as brand-specific governance issues that are integrated into the media plan.”

The Connection Between Brand Safety and Wasted Programmatic Spend

Beyond content adjacency issues, wasted spend is a major concern when it comes to programmatic investments.

The ANA’s latest Programmatic Transparency Benchmark found a considerable gap in how effectively advertisers convert their spend into working media. Higher-performing advertisers directed 54% of their programmatic investments toward impressions that were measurable, viewable, and free of invalid traffic and made-for-advertising (MFA) content. Lower-performing advertisers converted just 32.1%—in other words, more than two-thirds of their spend was wasted.

The platforms marketing teams use for programmatic advertising have a considerable impact on how effectively they’re able to direct their spend. For example, platforms that prioritize supply path optimization (SPO)—offering supply chain visibility, neutral buy-side transparency, and brand safety controls built into the buying process—help advertisers convert more spend into quality placements.

“The best DSPs clean up the supply chain before an advertiser even bids—vetting publishers, filtering out bots, and removing invalid traffic up front,” notes Lindsey Freed, SVP of Media Investment at Basis.

How Leading Advertisers Are Approaching Brand Safety and Suitability in 2026

Successfully addressing brand suitability, brand safety, and programmatic waste in today’s media environment requires marketing leaders to think about these issues differently than they have in the past.

“Historically, brand safety meant not showing up next to negative content,” says Dan Wilson, GVP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis.  “Today, it's about safeguarding your brand's integrity: considering where your ads are placed, the quality of the surrounding content, and what's suitable for your brand, audience, message, and moment in the customer journey.”

Legacy brand safety approaches were characterized by post-campaign verification, a reliance on platforms to manage risk, and blunt controls like broad keyword blocks or genre-level content blocking. As the complexity of the digital media environment has grown, Weeks says that advertisers must take on more responsibility, taking the time to craft nuanced brand safety and suitability strategies that are engrained into the planning process.

Leading advertisers are now incorporating pre-bid tools alongside post-bid verification, adding solutions to block MFAs and other low-quality websites, and accounting for channel- and platform-specific risks. Social listening, for example, has become essential given the polarization of content on social platforms.

Content adjacency approaches are also becoming more nuanced. The most successful advertisers are moving away from binary “safe vs. unsafe” thinking, and towards more granular, context-specific approaches. Rather than applying a blanket block on all news content, for instance, advertisers can use inclusion lists of trusted publishers paired with contextual targeting to ensure ads appear alongside news the brand is comfortable with, and within trusted editorial environments. “It’s about approaching it from a lens that isn’t black and white,” says Wilson.

Technology is evolving to support advertisers in these more granular approaches. For example, newer solutions can go beyond keyword matching, using contextual and semantic analysis to assess whether content is actually suitable and incorporating real-time signals to reduce waste.

Ultimately, success depends on leaders shifting their mindset, considering brand safety and suitability in the planning phase, and addressing them through a nuanced, multi-pronged approach.

How Advertising Leaders Can Close the Brand Safety Gap

Crafting a brand safety strategy suited to the complexity of today's media landscape takes real investment. Auditing legacy approaches, building channel-specific controls, and evolving workflows and tech stacks all take time. For leaders willing to invest that time, however, the potential returns are significant.

"The opportunity amongst the complexity is there," says Wilson. "The question is, will advertisers take the time to find it?"

—

For a deeper look at how supply path optimization supports stronger brand safety outcomes, check out The Case for Supply Path Optimization as Strategic Priority.