• by Colin Kirkland , January 9, 2024

After slashing its content moderation team and allowing harmful content on the app, Elon Musk's X says it is now enhancing its brand-safety efforts.

Starting in February, X will expand access to its inventory pilot with global media measurement and optimization platform Integral Ad Science (IAS), promising all U.S. vertical video advertisers “maximum control over where their ads appear.”

“In this partnership, IAS classifies all Vertical Video Ad adjacencies for brand safety and suitability aligned to the GARM framework,” the company wrote in a blog post, suggesting that ad partners can be reassured their vertical video ads don't appear next to harmful and offensive content.

In recent months, the company has driven advertisers away due to brand safety concerns (and volatile behavior by Musk himself), with major ad partners suspending their ad spend on X and reallocating it to other competing social-media platforms. The app formerly known as Twitter has lost over 71% of its value since Musk took over in April 2022, according to a recent estimate by mutual fund Fidelity.

“Vertical video,” it adds, “is the fastest-growing surface on X” with over 100 million people watching vertical video every day “at an average of over 13 minutes per day,” sometimes accounting for “around 20% of all time spent on the platform.”

Unfortunately, there is no way to check if these numbers are accurate.

However, X is hiring new people to its brand safety team, which Musk dramatically downsized when he bought the company for $44 billion in 2022, driving away the platform's trust and safety leaders as well. The company now says that its brand safety and content moderation teams will continue to expand in Q1.