Ad spend in the digital audio space is expected to exceed $7.5 billion this year—leading the way to become one of the fastest-growing channels for media investment.
As podcasts grow into mainstream media, you may wonder about the type of content in this new medium. To protect your brand identity, brand suitability guidelines and tools (much like the ones that exist for video) need to be in place.
At AudioGO, we’ve prioritized creating a safe space for creators, listeners, and advertisers by enhancing AudioGO’s podcast targeting capabilities with brand suitability segments.
Before we dive into the latest from AudioGO, let’s chat about brand suitability.
What is Brand Suitability?
Brand suitability can often be confused with brand safety:
Brand suitability refers to avoiding content that is not aligned with a brand’s values, voice, or audience.
Brand Safety refers to content that should not be monetized by any advertiser. In most instances, Brand Safety assurances by platforms are enough for brands. If a brand needs more choice in its content alignment, that’s where brand suitability comes in.
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) created the brand suitability framework, which provides definitions of potentially risky categories for advertisers. These definitions allow advertisers to craft contextual profiles that align with their brand’s identity.
For example, a liquor brand wouldn’t want to advertise next to content that targets children or young adults under twenty-one—not only can that hurt the company’s reputation, but it’s also a clear misuse of a brand’s ad spend.
Remember that while brand suitability is vital to your reputation, you don’t want to be too safe when running audio ads and miss the mark. For example, 74% of True Crime listeners are women. Using the Crime & Violence or Death and Injury anti-targeting segments will limit the reach of F18+. (Provided via SiriusXM Media's Q2'23 Podsurvey Podcast User Study.)
It’s easy to restrict your scale without realizing you are, and that’s why understanding brand suitability and all of its targeting nuances can be beneficial.
AudioGo's New Brand Suitability Targeting Capabilities
In partnership with Comscore, AudioGO now provides cutting-edge podcast contextual targeting capabilities that enable advertisers to align with specific content at a far more refined level than keyword-based solutions.
A bit more about how AudioGO’s brand suitability works: each new podcast episode registered on our platform gets transcribed and categorized to ensure compliance with the GARM brand suitability framework.
With Comscore’s AI-contextual brand protection filters, you can now avoid unwanted content and decide what content suits your brand based on your tolerance. With this solution, go beyond basic keyword blocking and avoid unsuitable content based on two different levels:
- Standard: Aligns with content that is appropriate for most audiences and avoids content that is suitable for adults only. These are the options you should choose when Brand Safety assurances are not enough. Your ads will run next to content where topics are talked about in the context of entertainment, breaking news, or education. This is the podcast equivalent of network TV like NBC, CBS, and family-friendly networks like Nickelodeon and Hallmark.
- Limited: Aligns with content that is appropriate for all audiences, including children. You should only choose limited when your brand is particularly sensitive about specific topics, as reach will be significantly impacted. Your ads will run in the podcast equivalent of family friendly TV networks like Nickelodeon, Hallmark, etc.
AudioGO offers 14 segments for you to choose from based on your brand’s unique needs. Some of those include:
- Adult Sexual Explicit Content
- Alcohol
- Arms and Ammunition
- Crime and Violence
- Death or Injury
- Epidemic
- Hate Speech and Acts of Aggression
A Glimpse of Brand Suitability for Podcast Campaigns at Work:
Choose a segment from the provided list:
The view once you have made your selection(s).
Learn more about brand suitability here.
Put It Into Action
AudioGO’s brand suitability feature enhancements allow you to make customized content decisions at scale while not sacrificing your brand’s equity and reputation.
As a brand, it’s crucial that you understand how brand suitability can help augment content decisions when brand safety assurances are not enough—and AudioGO is here to help you do just that.
