Social media ads: Twitter woes put focus on brand safety

Focused approach to media targeting, using third-party verification tools among measures advertisers are adopting

- VIVEAT SUSAN PINTO

Twitter's current travails with advertisers, with many of them hitting the pause button on advertising, has brought into focus the issue of brand safety. A recent study by Gurugram-based mFilterit, a company that works with advertisers on improving brand safety, says that at least 20-25 per cent of the digital advertising budget of a company is wasted because ads are sitting in brand-unsuitable environments.

Twitter, for instance, has had to deal with multiple advertiser calls for safety in the past, too.

A month ago, global advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Walt Disney and Mazda had to temporarily suspend advertising on Twitter after their ads were spotted next to offensive content.

In the current round, big spenders such as Mondelez, Pfizer, the Volkswagen group, General Mills and General Motors have hit the pause button. Ad and media agencies are also advising their clients to go slow with advertising on the platform.

Experts say that Twitter is not the only channel having to contend with brand unsafety in advertising. Google and Facebook, which are bigger digital advertising platforms in India, face similar issues.

The problem has become even more acute now, with uncertainty prevailing in the tech world. The content curation teams, for instance, were amongst those that were given pink slips in India as well as internationally at Twitter last week.