SpotX | Brand Safety

At SpotX, brand safety is one of our core competencies. As your trusted partner, we have in place a multi-pronged protocol to maintain a brand-safe platform.

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Brand safety and inventory quality have been in our DNA since day one. SpotX has not only invested heavily in industry-leading solutions, we also have a dedicated team solely focused on the cause. We understand that it takes a mixture of people, technology, and processes to effectively fight low-quality, invalid, and unsafe ad placements.

Quality is integrated into every aspect of SpotX, from our stringent onboarding and approval processes to human oversight and technology on every impression served. We’re dedicated to doing whatever possible to eradicate these issues from the industry.

SpotX brand safety infrastructure

Anti-fraud vendors

SpotX works with several third-party partners including DoubleVerify, Moat, Zvelo, and SimilarWeb to screen for non-human traffic, monitor brand safety, and verify inventory quality and viewability. On a yearly basis, these vendor fees are one of SpotX’s most expensive line items.

SpotX Brand Safety Team

The sophistication of fraud in advertising technology is astounding and continues to evolve, which is why we built out a Brand Safety Team to manage our anti-fraud vendors and provide human eyes and analysis. Because of this we are able to react quickly and, more importantly, proactively communicate to the demand-side of the business on how they can protect an advertiser’s investment.

Certifications

SpotX is a founding member of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), focused on driving transparency in the business relationships and transactions that drive the digital ad industry. The group focuses on four key areas — eliminating fraudulent digital ad traffic, combating malware, fighting ad-supported internet piracy, and promoting brand safety through greater transparency.

Pay-back programs

On the rare occasion that invalid traffic does slip past our safety nets, SpotX participates in several pay-back programs with different vendors including Google, DataXu, and Adobe, to help advertisers recoup costs incurred by fraudsters.

IAB Transparency and Consent Framework registered vendor

In November 2017, IAB Europe and a cross-section of the publishing and advertising industry announced a new Transparency and Consent Framework to help publishers, advertisers, and technology companies comply with key elements of GDPR. The Framework gives the publishing and advertising industries a common language with which to communicate consumer consent for the delivery of relevant online advertising and content.

Ads.txt

SpotX has proactively encouraged and instructed adoption of ads.txt across all of our platform customers in the spirit of keeping the industry free of fraud. We proactively block any suppliers that have not listed us in their ads.txt file. If the supplier does not have an ads.txt file, SpotX will require a proof of partnership between a premium supplier and a reseller. Inventory resale not backed by ads.txt or partnership proof is added to the SpotX Network Blacklist.

At SpotX, we’re committed to ensuring a brand-safe environment for our advertisers. We’ve laid a strong foundation with our brand safety infrastructure, which includes licenses with anti-fraud vendors, a dedicated in-house Brand Safety Team, compliance with TAG’s various inventory quality, brand safety and anti-fraud certifications, and participation in a variety of payback programs. Learn more about the ins and outs of our brand safety philosophy from Nick Frizzell, senior director of brand safety at SpotX.

“SpotX was the first supply-side platform that we partnered with in providing content categorization for brand safety, and we’re proud of the work we’ve done together to make the internet a safer place to advertise,” says Jeff Finn, CEO, zvelo.

To learn more about our partnership, click here.

Inventory assurance: Quality

Offering legitimate, premium supply to our demand partners is core to the SpotX mission of transparency and informed control.

We have a strict onboarding process with new publishers to ensure they meet our quality standards and a zero-tolerance policy for content involving hate, nudity, violence, graphic content, gambling, piracy, illegal drugs, defamation, pornography, hacking, and counterfeit goods. Additionally, we have a network blacklist which blocks unsafe, invalid, fraudulent, or low-quality domains. We focus on removing the truly low-quality inventory (and sources), while retaining the ability to assist advertisers in reaching a large audience with quality inventory. SpotX requires transparency and for publishers to pass full path URLs where ads are playing, as opposed to a vague inventory source.

Take Down Policy
If a buyer feels that specific ad placements are in violation of their expectations, please notify SpotX right away. Within 24 hours, SpotX will make commercially reasonable efforts to correct or take down the violation. The contractual consequences of not taking down an ad in accordance with our Take Down Policy are evaluated and agreed with the buyer on a case by case basis. If you don’t have a contact at SpotX, please reach out to brandsafety@spotx.tv and someone from our team will get back to you as soon as possible.