YouTube can kill your brand: here’s how

While digital advertising offers brands a unique platform for reaching potential customers, there are instances when using digital advertising insensitively or in a way that annoys users can actually put a brand at risk.

An example is the 2013 YouTube video of a tragic accident in Pinetown in which an out-of-control truck ploughed into a series of cars, killing more than 22 people. The clip was viewed by more than 100 000 people. But, as part of a wider digital campaign, a popular fast food chain had adverts that appeared across the bottom of the clip — obscuring more than a quarter of the video. This caused a series of outraged responses on social media that highlighted the insensitivity of the advert placement and cultivated distaste for the brand. Just the opposite of what advertising is supposed to achieve.

A similar example was the unfortunate placement of Apple’s iPad Air advert depicting deep sea divers above a story about the search for the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that went missing in early 2014. Twitter users, in particular, responded with derision and the advert was removed.

Where print publications offer static spaces for advertising, digital publishing is emerging as a more cost-effective and better-targeted platform for advertising and gives companies the opportunity to distinguish their message from the rest of the vast amounts of information users are exposed to daily. Common examples include payrolls and banner adverts that sit alongside, on top of and even inside news articles and videos.

Brands should take great care when placing their ads on news and video sites. Media and marketing do, can and should exist alongside one another on the basis that each medium be treated as a valuable and trustworthy source of information.

Brands begin to suffer when campaign budgets force media buyers and planners to place their adverts in spaces that aren’t properly managed or respected.

If a media buyer is bidding on a particular word and a popular news video happens to match their bid, there is no control over how the advert and news clip are paired. This is hugely risky for brands as news content (which is often negative) can have a knock-on impact on their reputation.

One solution would be to ban advertising on news-related clips and articles, but this model would be disastrous for news websites that run on ad-funded models and would reduce access to some online audiences for advertisers.

The second, and more effective, option is to use the advantages of digital to place stricter controls on advertising by creating filters that can detect negative content and allocate adverts accordingly. When setting up campaigns on YouTube or Google Display Network, media buyers can use tools that recognise negative keywords or negative placements in order to tighten up their targeting.

As news content is dynamic and stories can appear and evolve rapidly, there also needs to be an element of constant monitoring.

Digital platforms offer many opportunities for brands to get significant returns on their advertising campaigns through accurate audience targeting, easily updated content and accurate engagement metrics. But, particularly in the context of news media, it is important that digital advertising be carefully curated to avoid harming a brand’s image.

Image: Markus Lütkemeyer via Flickr.