Risky Business

Transparency is one of advertising’s most important issues today, 

with marketers demanding their messaging appear within a brand-safe environment where they can exert control over their placements. Yet, YouTube has struggled to create a brand-safe environment and despite its repeated efforts at regulation, these issues persist. With 400+ hours of video uploaded every minute, it is certainly a daunting task to monitor and control content on the platform.

Why is brand safety so difficult to achieve on YouTube?

The volume of content enables YouTube to provide advertisers the scale they want, but it also creates an environment ripe for brand-safety issues. The sheer number of videos results in a platform that is very longtail, consisting of thousands of channels of largely user-generated content with varying degrees of brand safety. The threat of inappropriate content also extends to YouTube’s premium content given the lack of transparency and relative creative autonomy of top influencers. Consider that:

• Due to the sheer volume of channels, only .04% of YouTube channels are fully comScore measured.
• 61% of recent content posted by the top YouTube channels contained “negative sentiment.”

However, there is a place on YouTube for advertisers who are looking for popular, viral content that is professionally produced and brand safe: TV and film-related channels.