• by Alex Weprin , September 10, 2018

The advertising technology firm Zefr on Monday started to roll out a new technology solution that provides content filters for YouTube. The filters are intended to address concerns around brand safety and brand appropriateness on the video platform.

The two launch filters focus on kids content and English-language content, allowing brands to filter their buys based on key demographics and brand alignment.

YouTube has taken significant criticism over the last year, as a result of inappropriate content appearing in its kids application, and being automatically served to viewers after normal kids programming.

The filters may not help with the sorting of those videos from the viewer’s perspective, but they will alleviate concerns from advertisers that could otherwise have their ads attached to that inappropriate content.

The company says its filters work through a combination of machine learning and human review.

“When a consumer sees a brand advertisement on YouTube, they view it as an implicit endorsement of the content it is in front of, regardless of where it is placed,” says Oded Noy, CTO Zefr, in a statement to Digital News Daily. “As a result, it is incredibly important that brands are given assurances their messages will be filtered, aligned and adjacent to content that is consumed by the audience they are trying to reach.

"But with the half-life of a video on YouTube lasting only three days, the sheer volume and dynamic nature of content has made it tough for brands to navigate.”

While concerns over brand safety and brand appropriateness are common across the media landscape, they are particularly problematic in the world of free streaming video.

Companies like Hulu and Crackle sell their programming similar to TV, giving advertisers a better sense of the programming their ads will appear next to. (Even their programmatic ad buys allow for relatively simple targeting and classification.)

In the case of YouTube and some other free video platforms, neither the advertiser nor the platform necessarily knows all the videos or channels where the ads are appearing, raising the stakes for brand safety technology.