• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, July 11, 2017

The brouhaha over brand safety -- specifically concerning Google’s YouTube -- may not be over just yet.

In a research note, Brian Wieser, senior research analyst, Pivotal Research Group, expressed the following concern: “It seems clear that Google has not fully recovered from the brand safety episode which started earlier this year. While investors may never be able to identify its near-term impact given a lack of disclosures from the company, a bigger concern is that Google executives must spend their time with marketers explaining their approach to brand safety rather than upselling on using Google ad products more strategically.”

Wieser wrote that solutions would require more humans versus machines, and “we don’t think this issue will go away any time soon.”

This clear-eyed observation places the onus on Google to address the problem troubling marketers and the rest of the digital advertising ecosystem.

Another thorny issue Wieser discussed: viewability. In his note, he suggested that while most digital media owners face obstacles to supporting third-party measurement tools, the challenges appear more intense  for Facebook. “Although Facebook is making progress in providing better access to third parties to provide independent measurement, viewability problems won’t go away, especially as advertisers raise standards on this metric,” Wieser wrote