Are marketers paying enough attention to brand safety on streaming TV?

As more viewers make the switch from traditional TV to streaming platforms, advertisers are quickly following suit, investing billions in Connected TV (CTV) advertising. But with this shift comes a range of new complexities. Unlike the world of legacy TV where ad placements are predetermined, the streaming landscape is a vast, unpredictable environment where content quality, context, and ad placements can fluctuate significantly.

For brands navigating this complex space, ensuring brand safety is not just about avoiding minor mishaps—it’s about safeguarding brand equity, maintaining consumer trust, and protecting the long-term integrity of your business. In this post, we’ll examine how brand safety fits within the larger context of streaming TV advertising and offer actionable strategies to help you protect your brand while maximizing the medium’s potential.

How does brand safety interact with contextual targeting?

While contextual targeting ensures that your ads align with the content viewers are consuming, brand safety is a more specific concern — it’s about making sure that your ads do not appear next to content that could negatively impact your brand’s reputation. This includes avoiding environments with harmful or sensitive topics, such as drugs, violence, explicit language, or other controversial content.

Brand safety is a crucial subset of contextual targeting. The two work together, but they have different focuses. Contextual targeting places ads in the right environment, based on the content being consumed. Brand safety, on the other hand, ensures that the content surrounding your ad does not pose a risk to your brand’s image by containing harmful or sensitive themes. One easy way to think of this is contextual targeting is focused on inclusion, whereas brand safety targeting is focused on exclusion. A home improvement advertiser may think weather-related content is right for their brand, but they may want to avoid news coverage of disasters, where they could be judged as profiting from misfortune.

In the world of streaming TV, where content is varied and often unpredictable, brand safety can be difficult to manage at scale. This is where GenAI comes in. By using advanced technology, GenAI flags content that may be deemed unsafe for your brand, including content featuring violence, drug use, hate speech, or explicit language. This proactive approach allows for content to be excluded in real-time, ensuring that your ads never appear in harmful or inappropriate contexts.

Brand safety helps advertisers avoid misaligned ads

Contextually misaligned ads can have a profound impact on brand perception and viewer engagement. When an ad appears out of place or irrelevant to the content being consumed, it risks undermining the connection between the brand and the audience. A recent study highlighted that 54% of viewers were less interested in both the brand and the products presented in contextually misaligned ads.

This misalignment doesn’t just affect immediate engagement; it can also foster negative long-term associations, where viewers begin to view the brand as disconnected, irrelevant, or even inappropriate for the content they are watching.

Importantly, these mismatches often fall outside the scope of traditional brand safety filters, which typically focus on avoiding harmful or explicit content. For example:

• A home goods ad might run during an episode of Hoarders, creating a negative association between the brand and overfull, poorly maintained spaces.
• A cheerful car commercial might air alongside a heavy drama — technically brand safe, but contextually inappropriate and tone-deaf.

Such juxtapositions can reduce the effectiveness of an ad campaign, as viewers are more likely to ignore, dismiss, or develop a negative perception of the brand. The Alliance for Video-level Contextual Advertising (AVCA) stresses the importance of moving beyond traditional demographic-based targeting. AVCA advocates for a deeper, more nuanced approach to contextual advertising, one that takes into account not just who the viewer is, but the specific context of what they’re watching and how they’re engaging with the content.

Advanced contextual targeting strategies that include a brand-safety lens can help brands ensure their messaging resonates in the right context, reinforcing the relevance and appropriateness of their advertisements. This approach helps build a positive brand perception, increases viewer engagement, and ultimately improves the return on investment for advertisers.

Leveraging technology for brand safety

Until recently, it was extremely difficult to manage context or brand safety flags at scale on CTV. Metadata is inconsistent across a fractured ecosystem, meaning that targeting parameters are not always the same across vendors. Contextual targeting powered by next-gen technology offers a range of significant benefits in streaming TV advertising.

Why scene-level intelligence matters

Most brand safety solutions in market still rely on program-level classification—an approach that often leads to two critical issues:

1. False positives that expose brands to risk

Even in programs rated as “safe,” individual scenes can contain emotionally charged or inappropriate content. For instance, a Disney film like The Lion King carries a general rating of “G,” but includes moments of death, violence, and emotional distress. Without scene-level analysis, an ad might appear immediately after Mufasa’s death — an inappropriate placement that could cast a cheerful or family-focused brand in a negative light.

2. False negatives that limit campaign scale

On the other hand, program-level filters might blacklist an entire news or reality program due to a single sensitive segment. Good Morning America, for example, often includes a mix of hard news and lighter human interest stories. Scene-level intelligence allows advertisers to identify and buy into brand-safe moments within otherwise excluded programming, recovering lost inventory without compromising suitability.

Wurl’s BrandDiscovery: Built for contextual precision

BrandDiscovery uses AI-driven scene segmentation to classify CTV content based on the actual emotional and thematic signals present right before each ad break. Rather than assigning a single rating to an entire show or episode, it continuously evaluates the content stream for specific IAB defined brand safety brand safety categories like:

• Death, harm & tragedy
• Illicit drugs
• Profanity
• War & conflict
• Firearms & weapons
• Derogatory language
• Sexual content
• Violence

The result is a real-time, segment-level understanding of brand safety, allowing buyers to programmatically target only the most suitable moments — without sacrificing scale.

For more insights on optimizing ad creatives, check out our article on Optimizing Ad Creatives on CTV.

Taking action: How to ensure brand safety

To ensure brand safety in streaming TV advertising, here are a few steps advertisers can take:

1. Use Advanced Technology: Leverage tools like BrandDiscovery that analyze content at a scene-level, flagging potentially unsafe content. This helps ensure that ads are placed in brand-safe environments without needlessly limiting campaign scale.
2. Conduct Brand Safety Audits: Regularly assess your current advertising campaigns and placements to ensure they align with your brand’s values. An audit can help identify potential risks and allow you to take proactive measures before any damage is done.
3. Stay Informed on Best Practices: The landscape of streaming TV advertising is continuously evolving, so it’s important to stay informed about industry best practices for maintaining brand safety. This will allow you to implement the most effective strategies and keep your brand protected.
4. Work with Trusted Partners: Collaborate with technology providers and ad platforms that prioritize brand safety and offer reliable solutions for contextual targeting. Trusting the right partners ensures that your ads will always appear in the right context.

Conclusion

As streaming TV continues to dominate the media landscape, brand safety has become more critical than ever. The combination of advanced technology, proper vetting processes, and strategic partnerships can help advertisers navigate this complex ecosystem while protecting their brand reputation. By implementing robust brand safety measures, maintaining transparency, and staying informed about industry best practices, marketers can confidently leverage the powerful reach of streaming TV advertising.

Don’t wait for a brand safety crisis to act. Take proactive steps today to audit your current streaming TV advertising strategy and implement comprehensive safety measures. Your brand’s reputation—and bottom line—will thank you. Ready to enhance your brand safety strategy?

Use Wurl’s BrandDiscovery curated packages to access brand-safe, premium inventory across 80B+ monthly impressions through your DSP of choice.