Addressing advertising’s over-reliance on the open web
In recent years, the allocation of advertising spend has failed to keep pace with rapid shifts in consumer behavior and technology capabilities. As a result, many brands are pouring tremendous spend into the open web, neglecting the fact that targeting capabilities and consumer attention aren’t what they used to be. At the same time, brand safety concerns on the open web — despite more than a decade of intense scrutiny — continue to leave brands exposed when existing systems allow headline-grabbing nefarious content to slip through, as evidenced by the recent Adalytics CSAM report. The open web, as we once knew it, is struggling. Advertisers need to adjust accordingly—and fast. Let’s look at the forces contributing to a rapid decline in ad opportunities on the open web, as well as the new and more-promising opportunities that are emerging to fill the gap. The continued brand safety crisis Despite ad tech’s best intentions and good-faith efforts to combat the monetization of nefarious content, the most recent Adalytics report calls attention to the ways in which content filters can fail in the open web. This should serve as both a wakeup call and an opportunity for brands and their agencies to identify alternative ways of ensuring brand-safe ad placements. Open-web advertising relies on automated placements across a vast, unregulated landscape. Many advertisers lack full URL-level transparency, making it difficult to know exactly where their ads appear. Meanwhile, previously “safe” walled gardens are stripping away content moderation controls and other safeguards, compelling advertisers to turn elsewhere. Technical filters and moderation do a lot of heavy lifting, but they unfortunately are not always enough to prevent these egregious breaches of trust. Advertisers need to take a hard look at where they’re placing their programmatic dollars. White-listing has been a proven strategy against MFA and other undesirable UGC content, but the real opportunity now is in under-invested, high-quality channels outside the open web. The forces driving consumers away from the open web There are myriad industry shifts underway that are collectively altering the role of the open web in today’s larger media landscape. For example, Google is under immense scrutiny for its alleged monopolistic practices, and forthcoming regulatory mandates could dramatically reshape the services and data connections available to advertisers for use on the open web. At the same time, Google — and the rest of the digital ecosystem — is already repositioning itself for the future. That’s because the real disruption to both search and traditional display channels is coming from generative AI, which is steadily eating into search’s dominance as a way of finding and organizing information. As users increasingly rely on conversational interfaces to access information, they are not using traditional search platforms, and they are not seeing traditional search ads. Likewise, they are also not clicking out to third-party sites, meaning they won’t see display ads on those sites either. This behavioral transition is still in its infancy, but its long-term impact on the open web and our industry will be massive. A move toward quality and control As open web advertising continues to be plagued by upheaval and uncertainty, advertisers are beginning to shift their budgets away from long-tail cheap reach on the web and toward higher-quality, higher-control environments. Advertisers that diversify their media mixes with more direct supply on connected TV (CTV), mobile in-app, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) reduce their brand safety risks while improving outcomes on several fronts. The capacity for brand safety is built into the fabric of in-app and CTV in ways the open web can’t match. That’s because apps are vetted by the app store or device before becoming available to download on a connected TV or mobile phone. There are no blind placements because every ad runs in a controlled, verified environment with full transparency. For CTV and in-app, users have already opted in at least once (often twice on mobile). At the same time, buying direct inventory in these environments reduces costs by eliminating hops in the advertising supply path, ultimately improving ad spend efficiency. By prioritizing non-open-web channels, advertisers naturally prioritize inventory that is curated and largely pre-vetted for brand safety. In addition, these channels offer exclusive full-screen opportunities not available on the open web. This approach ensures advertisers don’t unknowingly fund harmful content. While brand safety vendors are a key part of the equation, the latest Adalytics revelations demonstrate that they are clearly not the only approach to ensuring brand safety. As an industry, we must do more to ensure that our ad dollars are flowing to reputable, trustworthy and quality ad placements. Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared in Streetfight Magazine.
