Amid ongoing concerns over brand safety and marketers pulling non-search-related advertising on Google, ad exchange DashBid on Monday named Robert McNair its brand safety czar. It said the
appointment was made to focus on ad quality and transparency.
In the role, McNair will lead a brand safety team and report to DashBid CEO Rodger Wells.
“Brand safety is the
number one growing concern for our advertisers. As the industry struggles to combat ad fraud, bot traffic, and unsafe content, advertisers need more control over where and how their ads are
appearing,” stated McNair.
DashBid said it’s working with WhiteOps to deploy pre-bid fraud filtering on all traffic and to ensure advertisers see “100% bot-free
traffic.” In addition, the company said it's using artificial intelligence to identify and remove environments that are “unsafe,” and working directly with clients
campaign-by-campaign to analyze brand risk and use custom rules to ensure all campaigns meet brand-safety specifications.
In May of 2016, DashBid launched PubTools, a product that stores
screen grabs of a page where ads are played and tracks all scripts running on that page. DashBid said PubTools was built to deepen its commitment to provide transparent and brand-safe
environments.
“We believe brand safety only begins in relation to proximity to content. True brand safety extends far beyond this, ultimately reaching efficacy of spend that considers
not just viewability and quality, but also context and engagement,” Wells stated.