How brands can be proactive about safety over 2012 holiday season

Eric Bosco, COO, ChoiceStream: First, by continually adjusting targeting, these platforms not only find the right audience, but they keep up as the audience shifts through the holiday season. One example of such a shift is value shoppers who appear on black Friday that are gradually replaced by expedient shoppers as the holidays loom. Second, the transparency and insights provided by these platforms can support creative teams in crafting more granular and more relevant messaging.

Kristina: Brand protection is always a heated topic; how can brands ensure their ads are placed with acceptable content over the holidays?

Eric: While the topic is heated, thankfully the solutions to address the problem are smoking hot! Many providers with very sophisticated technologies ensure brand safety across all types of media buys. These solutions work very well and in almost all cases outperform the old school "curated" approach to brand safety. The controls are also very customizable. It can range from simple protection from dubious content such as adult content to very tight controls monitoring the site, the content of the page, the position of the ad and more. Obviously there is a reach vs. protection tradeoff that all brands need to make.

Kristina: What are your top tips to keep family-driven brands safe during the 2012 holidays?

Eric: The number one tip is to work with one of the providers I alluded to above. Companies like AdSafe, Double Verify and Proximic all provide outstanding brand protection. The second tip is not to be lulled into a sense of false security by doing direct publisher buys. Obviously specific placements like homepage placements on a known publisher are extremely brand safe. However, when it comes to channel buys or run of network buys on a publisher, the amount of content that is syndicated and outsourced today means the likelihood of running on unsafe inventory is high on direct publisher buys.

More from Eric and ChoiceStream on Monday, including his tips for using showrooming to sell more over the 2012 holidays.

Tags: 2012 holiday preparations, brand safe advertising, ChoiceStream, ecommerce trends