Engagement
Brand safety
Also called unsafe inventory.
Brand safety is the set of controls that keep ads off pages a brand does not want to fund. It matters to any site that sells ad space and to any advertiser who buys it.
How it is measured
A page is classified by keywords, categories or manual lists, then allowed or blocked for each advertiser. Verification vendors scan the page where the ad was served and report violations after the fact.
Tarsier does not classify page content. It can show the traffic side of an ad business, such as referrers and bot share, while a verification service handles the content side.
Worked example
A parenting blog sells display slots. An airline advertiser blocks pages containing crash, collision and delay. One post about a stroller crash test matches the filter, and 3,200 impressions are flagged and refunded.
The blog changes the headline to say safety test. The next month's block rate on that post falls to zero, and the content is unchanged.
How it differs
Brand safety is about the page environment. Viewability is about whether the ad was seen. An impression is the delivery itself. An ad can be perfectly viewable on a page the advertiser would hate to be near.
Common errors
Blocking whole categories on a keyword and losing good inventory. Confusing brand safety with ad fraud. Ignoring user comments on the page. Relying on one vendor's labels. Failing to log which pages were blocked.
In practice
Write down the topics you will never carry and the ones advertisers commonly block. Review blocked impressions each quarter and fix the pages that got caught by accident.