Outbrain adds IAS integration to contextually shield for brand safety

Content discovery platform Outbrain is boosting its brand safety, with its recent announcement of a partnership with ad-quality measurement firm Integral Ad Science (IAS).

Previously, VP of Product Marketing Dennis Yuscavitch told me, his company offered a more limited protection. When marketers offered their content on Outbrain’s online grid, which provides content “you may also like” at the bottom of articles, they could also embed a pixel from IAS, Double Verify or Moat. Here’s a typical Outbrain content discovery grid:

This pixel would allow the measurement service to scan the page and then deliver a report about the surrounding content, based on objectionable keywords the marketer had previously selected. A page containing those keywords would be blocked from showing the ad.

Now, IAS provides a built-in service that prevents the marketer’s content from being loaded onto a given page, based on a contextual reading of the content that goes beyond keyword blocking.

Yuscavitch said that, for instance, there might have recently been a big story about drugs found on a cruise ship. Instead of blocking display of a marketer’s content on every page with the words “drug” or “cruise,” IAS’s intelligent service can better understand if the page contained content about that particular story or a similar story and could avoid it if so desired. Additionally, he said, Outbrain will be adding its own dashboard report about brand safety-related actions.

To his knowledge, Yuscavitch added, Outbrain is the only content discovery platform offering contextual notification to prevent publishers’ content from appearing on pages containing objectionable content.