Brand safety: Is your brand election-ready?

In an election cycle, brand safety needs to be monitored and scrutinized with the same intent as ROAS, says Elijah Harris (executive vice president of impact investment at IPG Mediabrands). He explores the media responsibility landscape in 2024 and lays out some brand strategies for election readiness in the face of rising misinformation and disinformation.

2024 is the year of elections. By the end of December over 2 billion voters across more than 60 countries – around a quarter of our planet’s total population – will have gone to the polls. It’s unprecedented. But this year’s election cycle also presents entirely new challenges and risks to advertisers – particularly in the US where the run-up to November is shaping up to be a loud and highly contested race.

One of the biggest obstacles brands and their marketing partners face in the months ahead is that what brands say, where they say it, and what stories their advertising is adjacent to will be scrutinized and judged by would-be customers. Already highly charged, political discourse has become more polarized, and that discourse (fueled by misinformation) has led to the polarization of media environments and audience opinions. Rather than seeking balanced sources of information, a lot of people are becoming more ideologically entrenched, adopting an “us versus them”, “if you’re not with us you’re against us” mentality.

And in an age when facts are treated as flexible and ‘truth’ has become subjective, brand advertisers looking to navigate this partisan environment have a tiny needle to thread in terms of finding the right path for their messaging.

As marketers we’re up against evolving challenges in this election cycle. In this piece I’ll dig into these challenges and the shifting media responsibility environment brands are facing. I will also lay out some key considerations for achieving election readiness and maintaining brand safety.

Brand safety, emerging threats and the commercial catch-22

No doubt about it, being a marketer during this election cycle is tough. A recent Forrester report indicated that 82% of marketing leaders in the US have concerns about the impact of November’s election on marketing their brands. And understandably so. Our recent study on media misinformation indicates that nearly half of respondents (44%) consider it the brand’s fault if their advertising appears next to disreputable content. Brands need a tight grip on where their messaging is placed – avoiding unwanted adjacency with polarizing, disreputable, or defamatory media content.

Added to which, with the evolution of generative AI, the sophistication of manipulated media content has advanced considerably. This is being used to create realistic deepfake videos and images that can mislead audiences – particularly across social media channels. Advertising that shares these channels with manipulated content runs the risk of significantly eroding customer trust.

But it’s more than that. We’ve all seen evidence of an emerging media-influence-to-real-world-harm pipeline, where the tone and tenor of rhetoric in the media leads to actual harm in real life, and not just TV soundbites or social media spite.

For marketers, this volatile, evolving landscape makes it incredibly difficult to serve the twin imperatives of audience activation (their brand needs to advertise) and brand safety (advertising is exponentially riskier during elections). It’s a conundrum the messaging is commercially essential, and the placement is (potentially) commercially dangerous.

Improving standards and media accountability

Step one for any marketer looking to be more accountable to consumers and guard brand safety is to vet their media partners. As a result, most media platforms have recognized their accountability to their audiences and, by extension, brand advertisers, for the content they host.

Evidence from our Media Responsibility Index (MRI) suggests many media organizations have made progress in trying to create a more transparent, more reputable, less toxic environment for their audiences. The MRI is a tool designed to evaluate and promote responsible media practices. It assesses media channels based on their adherence to ethical standards and commitment to providing trustworthy content.

A top-of-mind area for media responsibility is AI-generated content. Between the release of our fourth MRI in 2022 and MRI 5.0 this year it was clear that many platforms had developed their tools for identification and labeling of manipulated media. Some social media platforms have introduced protocols to flag AI-generated or manipulated content and provide context about whether the content is intended to deceive or entertain.

Encouragingly, there has been a significant improvement in social media responsibility standards across the MRI’s four main assessment categories – Safety, Sustainability, Inclusivity and Data Ethics. Since 2020, not only has the aggregated or average performance rating for social platforms increased by 11%, but the gap between the top benchmark performer and the average performance has narrowed from 16% to just 5%.

Get election ready

Election readiness requires constant, active management of campaigns. It requires careful planning, campaign agility and detailed reporting. This is a crucial time to be absolutely on top of where, how, when, and with what content your advertising is being used.

Here are some considerations to help put you on the road to election readiness:

Channel audit

Disreputable or defamatory content, disinformation or hate speech is an ugly and much debated byproduct of online discourse that gets amplified during election cycles. The onus is on brands to audit any engagement channels: including their track record of battling ‘fake news’, their content standards and moderation policies.

Social media platforms have upped their game regarding verification and safeguards. But it’s still worth familiarizing yourself with their content policies to understand where potential vulnerabilities may exist. It’s also a smart play to investigate first-party solutions and external providers available for monitoring content legitimacy and accuracy.

Content reviews

It’s good practice to ensure your creative content undergoes a multi-stage, multi-perspective review for potential political sensitivities.

Hyper vigilance with content adjacency

In an election cycle, brand safety needs to be monitored and scrutinized with the same intent as ROAS. Marketing messaging placed amid disreputable political content erodes trust and brand reputation. Because advertising can be read as an endorsement of adjacent channel content, monitor placement reporting carefully and be ready to move, amend, or suspend marketing activity rapidly.

Due diligence for influencer partnerships

Brand safety and media responsibility need to inform influencer selection and collaboration. It’s vital that influencers are mindful of the election-fueled volatility of the media environment and the need to prioritize brand safety when creating content. Also, brands should be ready to respond quickly if an issue arises with brand-funded influencer content, such as negative customer sentiment or backlash.

Watch out for fake endorsements

Impersonation scams aren’t new but they are now more convincing thanks to sophisticated AI wrappers. You should be on the lookout for fake accounts impersonating your brand, false (political) endorsements, or harmful stories created using AI-manipulated media that could threaten brand safety.

Scrutinize your programmatic inventory

Talk to your DSPs and SSPs about your brand safety concerns in the run up to the election. Challenge them on their efforts to minimize the risk of negative adjacency. Work with them on an agreed approach to channel verification. Advertising placement is their business so they should be powerful allies in the battle to get election-ready.

Customers may hold brands accountable for any negative media adjacency or disreputable manipulation of their advertising. This means there’s both a commercial and brand equity cost to organizations not being in control of their messaging. The solution is to become hypervigilant with how your brand shows up in these places and spaces.

Successful relationships between brands and audiences and media, takes all of us working together. The media buyers, the advertisers and brand marketers, the media owners or platforms – each of us can make a difference in maximizing transparency and minimizing toxicity. We’ve made progress, so let’s keep it going through this challenging election season.