• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 3, 2017

Only 27% of media buyers and planners say "with confidence" they are informed of the brand safety measures for the ads they buy, according to research released Wednesday.

The data from Vibrant Media suggests 33% do not feel informed and 15% either feel partly informed or informed from certain vendors.

Even more alarming, when asked how informed they were about ad vendors' brand safety measures, 24% of media buyers and planners failed to answer the question, which could suggest an unwillingness to admit their lack of brand safety knowledge, per the analysis.

More media buyers in the UK -- at nearly 63% -- than in the U.S., at nearly 35%, and Germany ,at 13%, admit that brand safety is typically not discussed for media buyers.

In March 2017, Google set new YouTube policies and guidelines, changing default settings and initiating new parameters, as disturbing Internet content continued to grow. Still, it appears that media buyers feel insecure about where the ads might serve up and whether they will appear next to certain types of content.

Nearly 88% of advertising planners and buyers said their top priority is ensuring brand-safe environments for their marketing clients. Some 59% said brand safety is typically discussed for media buys, yet less than 29% said they always know where their ads run.

It turns out that U.S. media buyers and planners are the least tuned in compared with their counterparts in the UK and Germany. More media buyers in the UK at nearly 42%, compared with Germany at 17% and U.S. at 19% know where their campaigns run.

Not all plan to remain silent. Nearly half said they plan to ask for brand safety information in media buys, and 73% agree with pulling ad spend on sites that have unsafe content, similar to the way some brands did earlier this year.

Still, more media buyers in the U.S., 84%, than the UK at 77% and Germany at73%, say it's more difficult to ensure brand safe when buying programmatic inventory on the open exchange.

For many in the industry managing brand safety and programmatic at the same time is a difficult problem to solve.

The study that aggregates responses from 66 media planners and buyers at media agencies in Germany, United Kingdom and the United States of America prompted Doug Stevenson, Vibrant Media co-founder, to spearhead a series of roundtable with industry executives to try to solve some of the issues around brand safety and programmatic ad buying, as well as a new ad placement guarantee aimed at reassuring brand safety measures verified by third-party data.

On April 11, 2017, Vibrant received the Trustworthy Accountability Group Inventory Quality Guidelines Seal, which provides a set of common disclosures relating to the quality of the inventory for publishers and platforms to inform their clients and partners on the buy-side.