X and Brand Safety
Since Elon Musk took control of Twitter (now X), a seemingly endless string of policy changes has led to chaos on the platform and a tsunami of uncertainty within the advertising community. Not a day goes by without some curious news about X's current state of play.
That said, X still represents a social media platform with out-sized, global influence and a landscape for critically important points of view. It has also been a commendable and reliable partner in the fight for brand safety over the last several years: trying to tackle hate speech, reducing misinformation and prioritizing fact-based information, addressing inclusion and algorithmic bias, and refusing political advertising. As this new course for X unfolds, agencies, brands, and publishers will need help to guide their activity on the platform.
Learn how to navigate brand safety and suitability on digital platforms. Marketers will get expert insight on platform safety, campaign settings and measurement, what brand safety isn't, and more.
Here are 5 things that you can do
Leading marketers who have prioritized brand safety and suitability now have dedicated practices and procedures for evaluating their partners, as new situations arise and evolve. Here are 5 things that you can do to determine if and when investing with a particular partner or platform is right for your brand:
- Determine the extent to which content moderation is important for alignment with your brand values, and for ensuring that your brand suitability plan is upheld. (Read more about aligning brand values and adjacent content)
- Find out if there are one or more certified Brand Safety Officers in place.
- Ask questions of your partners, such as:
- How are your content moderation and/or brand safety teams trained and resourced?
- Have those teams been recently downsized?
- What brand safety and suitability controls are in place?
- Can those controls be audited or verified?
- Assess the impact of frequently changing or lacking account managers or representatives who have been assigned to your brand or company.
- Create a scorecard with proof points and milestones that you would need to see in order to be comfortable with investing or re-investing your media dollars.
A View From the Inside
AJ Brown, former Head of Brand Safety and Ad Quality at Twitter, talks to Louis Jones about the Brand Safety Officer (BSO) and its growing role in the digital-advertising ecosystem, ad adjacency, the use and evolution of frameworks, and reacting to brand safety challenges. Watch the video »
From around the industry
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Nov 20, 2024Advertisers are returning to Twitter/X to keep Elon Musk happyExternal Link
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Sep 25, 2024Elon Musk’s X says it’s policing harmful content as scrutiny of the platform growsExternal Link
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Sep 5, 2024Some advertisers plan to pull back from Elon Musk’s X in 2025 over fears of ‘brand safety’External Link
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Jul 1, 2024X Rejoins GARM To Reassure Ad Partners on Brand SafetyExternal Link
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Jun 19, 2024Elon Musk clarifies “go f**k yourself” remark as he woos X advertisersExternal Link
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Apr 8, 2024Inside X’s latest efforts to make advertisers believe it’s a platform that’s safe for brandsExternal Link
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Feb 16, 2024The majority of traffic from Elon Musk's X may have been fake during the Super Bowl, report suggestsExternal Link
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Feb 4, 2024Super Bowl Advertisers Shun X in Favor of TikTok and Reddit, Reflecting Shift in Marketing StrategiesExternal Link
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Feb 2, 2024Elon Musk is striving to reengage advertisers through a recently secured brand safety technology deal.External Link
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Jan 25, 2024Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long GoneExternal Link
X Brand Safety & Suitability Policies and Guidelines
- Brand Safety @X
- Improving the health of the public conversation is a top priority for Twitter. Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves and create an unsafe environment, and this behavior has no place on Twitter. In addition to our work to combat this negative activity platform-wide, Twitter has invested in a suite of solutions aimed at ensuring a safe advertising experience for everyone who uses Twitter.
- Amplify Pre-Roll Publisher Program FAQs
- The Amplify Publisher Program was created to make it easy for publishers to monetize video content on Twitter, and also turn-key for advertisers to align with brand-safe content.
- X Transparency Center
- While Twitter has been publishing biannual transparency reports since 2012, in 2020 these reports evolved into a more comprehensive Transparency Center covering a broader array of Twitter's transparency efforts. Twitter now includes sections covering information requests, removal requests, copyright notices, trademark notices, email security, Twitter Rules enforcement, platform manipulation, and state-backed information operations.
- The X Rules
- Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation. Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. The Twitter Rules ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.
- Report Violations
- An overview of how to report potential violations of the Twitter Rules and Terms of Service.