It’s easy to assume there’s an inherent conflict between privacy and ad performance. But when Google commissioned Ipsos to interview more than 7,000 people across Europe about their data concerns, that’s not what we found. Discover the three principles brands should adopt to help ensure their marketing is both privacy-safe and effective.

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The European digital video market is seeing rapid growth. In Europe, it now commands nearly 40% of all display spend and is the fastest-growing segment within social. Innovations in this space, such as advances in video quality, mean that this growth will likely continue at speed.

However, the market is highly fragmented by factors including media consumption habits, regulation, and media trading cultures. There is also a lack of research into formats and the factors affecting buying decisions in the online programmatic video space.

Additionally, and as with other forms of digital advertising, identifying and measuring audiences across screens and touchpoints is becoming more of a challenge as platforms and services proliferate and the depreciation of cookies takes its toll. Any solution to this challenge will need to win the trust of consumers if it is to be fit for purpose.

Given the complexity of the digital video market, in December 2021 IAB Europe and PubMatic invited advertisers and agencies to take part in an industry survey. In doing so, we hope to further the understanding of online video formats and the factors influencing buying behaviours across Europe.

The survey attracted respondents who command significant volumes of advertising supply and demand.

Below is an infographic summarising the key findings. Download the full report at the bottom of the page.

IAB Europe’s Brand Advertising Committee conducted a survey in November 2019 to ask industry experts for their views on how brand safety has been tackled in 2019 and determine what action needs to happen in 2020. Whilst there are lots of studies which look at consumer views, the BAC wanted to find out what is actually happening from the advertising industry experts.

The results highlight how seriously the industry is taking brand safety, and show how the ecosystem has changed in the last couple of years to place more emphasise on ensuring brand safe environments.

Key findings include:

• The results reveal that brand safety and privacy remain priorities, with 77% of respondents saying that brand safety was a key priority.
• 57% of respondents agreed that brand safety was more of a challenge than in previous years, citing increased understanding and knowledge of brand safety by advertisers.
• When outlining how the buy-side protected against brand safety concerns, the Brand Safety Poll indicates that blacklists and keyword targeting remain the dominant methodology.
• A common theme within the Poll was the ongoing need for industry education, with wider discussion about solutions, differences, options, further education and knowledge exchange cited as important in 2020.

IAB Europe members can login to access the report below. 

To get a sense of what consumers are saying about content and environment quality, we conducted The Ripple Effect study. This research was designed to measure how consumer perception of a brand changes when its advertisements appear in different quality environments. Here’s what we learned: 

Content Quality and Ad Relevance are closely related

While the quality of a digital ad’s environment remains the factor that consumers find most important, ad relevance remains a critical concern for marketers to focus on. IAS found that 91% of UK consumers consider it important where a digital ad is placed, whilst a massive 87% believe it is important for ads to be relevant, personally, to them.

The biggest opportunity for brands, therefore, lies at the intersection of these two factors. 

Brands must both target consumers with relevant ads and also ensure ads are placed in a high quality content environments. In doing so, brands in the UK can maximise their impact.

High-quality content drives engagement

The study indicates widespread favourability for premium-quality ad placement. Consumers in the UK are 65% more likely to engage with an ad when surrounded by high-quality content, climbing to 66% in Singapore and 78% in Indonesia. Interaction with an ad is clearly much more likely when the consumer feels the surrounding content is of high quality.

A bad ad placement has serious consequences

The most worrisome insight we gathered in our study revealed that almost nine in ten (88%) UK consumers find it annoying when a brand appears next to low quality content. 

Low quality content environment also effects on brand reputation and appeal: over half (55%) of UK consumers state they feel less favourable about brands after seeing ads in sub-standard settings and 70% would stop using those brands all together. Meanwhile, a further 68% of British consumers hold brands accountable for poor placements and this figure only increases globally: reaching 72% in France and 86% in Indonesia.

So, in summary, our key learnings are:

1. Make sure your ads are relevant and personal – but make sure your ads appear in a high quality environment
2. Are you ads surrounded by top notch content? Make sure the places your ads end up contain content that matches the quality of your own ads
3. Avoid a tarnished reputation by ensuring your ads do not end up appearing in a low quality environment – you could lose brand integrity and worse, customers

Understanding the environment where your ads will appear is the first step to stopping the Ripple Effect in its tracks. By centering your brand safety strategy around the consumer, and controlling for what is suitable to them, you can avoid a bad ad placement that will send ripples through your brand engagement, favourability, and loyalty. 

Download the full Ripple Effect Study now to learn more.

IAB Europe's annual Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising Report is a comprehensive analysis of the European programmatic landscape, covering strategies and adoption trends, drivers of and barriers to growth, and forecasts for the future for 31 markets. The study, now in its fifth year, was developed by the IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee.  The key findings of the 2019 study include:

• There is a continued push for a quality and safe advertising environment
• Ads.txt is well established amongst publishers but awareness and adoption on the buy-side is low
• Talent and skills remain a barrier to investment
• Supply chain transparency is still an issue
• The number of advertisers with in-house operations for programmatic is now higher than the number that outsource to an agency
• Programmatic continues to be a catalyst for delivering brand campaigns at scale
• In light of GDPR, stakeholders are looking to use more first party data, private marketplaces and contextual targeting

Download the IAB Europe Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising Report 2019