Using curated marketplaces to ensure brand safety in digital ad buys

When Forrest Gump’s mother famously told him that “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get,” she just as easily could have been talking about digital ad placements purchased programmatically. Unfortunately, real-time bidding (RTB) is a real problem for advertisers, as the recent boycott of the Google Display Network and YouTube by a slew of frustrated big brands has proven. This mass shunning was precipitated by revelations that Google has been less than effective at ensuring advertisers aren’t placing their brand names alongside decisively brand-unfriendly content (hate speech, terrorist videos, etc) via programmatic ad buys.