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programmatic-and-brand-safety

Design & creation

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Updated 10-16 03:40

About this skill

Programmatic and Brand Safety

Decides how to buy automated display, video, connected TV (CTV), digital out-of-home (DOOH) and digital audio so that the ads are real, seen, placed next to acceptable content and bought through a supply path whose costs are known. Written for the media buyer, the client's marketing lead and the finance owner who must sign off on where the money goes; the skill specifies and audits, and never trades.

Use When

  • Spend is about to go through a DSP, a private marketplace or a programmatic guaranteed deal, and the controls must be written down first.
  • The agency reports millions of impressions, yet nobody can say what share was seen by people or was bot traffic.
  • Which share of every shilling lands with the publisher, and which intermediaries take the rest?
  • Keep our bank's ads off harmful content without starving Monitor, Nation or New Vision news pages of our spend.
  • Connected TV, digital billboards in Kampala or Nairobi, or podcast and streaming audio slots are on offer, and delivery must be proved.
  • A vendor is selling attention metrics; decide whether they add anything beyond viewability.

Do Not Use When

  • media-planning for the cross-channel plan: channel mix, reach and frequency, GRPs, flighting and classic radio, TV and outdoor weights.
  • playbook-paid-social-advertising for Meta, TikTok or LinkedIn campaign builds, and paid-search-advertising for Google Search, Shopping and Performance Max.
  • 08-influencer-marketing-strategy for creator vetting and influencer brand safety; advertising-attribution-and-measurement for proving sales impact.
  • Stop before any deal ID, insertion order, DSP change or spend without the client's written authority; return the brief and the questions for the seller instead.

Required Inputs

Artefact Source/provider Required? If absent
Objective, audience, markets, flight dates and budget line for programmatic Approved media plan (media-planning) or brief Yes Stop; request the plan line
Brand risk appetite: floor, sensitive categories, regulated-category rules Client marketing and legal owners Yes Apply the default floor and "medium" suitability; label as assumption
Seller and path data: DSP and SSP names, seller IDs, ads.txt or app-ads.txt, sellers.json entries, deal IDs, fee schedule Agency, trading desk, SSPs, publishers Conditional Mark every supply-path check NOT_ASSESSED; return the data request
Verification reports: viewability, IVT (GIVT and SIVT), brand-safety blocks, placement or app lists Accredited verification vendor or ad server Conditional Plan the tags and reporting; mark delivery quality NOT_ASSESSED
Channel proof: CTV app and device lists, DOOH play logs and site list, podcast download logs Seller, screen owner, podcast host Conditional per channel Require it in the deal terms; mark the channel NOT_ASSESSED until received
Inclusion list or local publisher list Client, agency or publishers No Build one from direct publisher contacts; see brand safety

Workflow

  1. Confirm the job: take the programmatic line from the approved plan and restate objective, audience, markets and budget. Stop if there is no plan line, no brand-risk owner or no authority to buy; return the brief skeleton and the questions.
  2. Choose the buying route per line: open exchange, private marketplace, preferred deal, programmatic guaranteed or a direct insertion order, weighing control, price and scale (see buying routes and supply path). In East Africa, check whether the premium local inventory is sold programmatically at all before designing around it.
  3. Set the supply-path rules: authorised sellers only (ads.txt and app-ads.txt), seller IDs checked in sellers.json, the SupplyChain object complete, the fewest hops, and a fee disclosure per layer. Ask for log-level data so spend can be matched to publisher revenue; without it, record each SPO check NOT_ASSESSED.
  4. Set delivery quality: MRC viewability as the floor (register MRC-VIEWABILITY-2015), GIVT and SIVT filtration with TAG-certified partners (registers MRC-IVT-2020, TAG-CERTIFIED-AGAINST-FRAUD), and attention only as an extra layer on viewable impressions (register IAB-MRC-ATTENTION-2025) (see viewability, IVT and attention).
  5. Set brand safety and suitability: a floor that no ad funds, suitability tiers by content category, an inclusion list for news and local-language publishers, and a short exclusion list; state that GARM was discontinued on 9 Aug 2024 and its framework is used as a legacy vocabulary (register WFA-GARM-DISCONTINUED-2024).
  6. Add channel rules for CTV, DOOH and audio: CTV app and device transparency and ad-pod rules, DOOH proof of play against the MRC OOH standards, and podcast delivery against IAB Tech Lab v2.2 (see CTV, DOOH and audio). Radio stays in media-planning.
  7. Write the reporting rules: which metrics are billed, which are diagnostic, the denominators, the make-good trigger and the post-flight transparency report.
  8. Run the quality and anti-slop gates; where a check fails (a missing seller ID, an unaccredited vendor, a floor gap), correct the brief and rerun that check before release.

Core terms at a glance

Term Meaning Check
Open exchange Real-time auction open to any buyer Highest reach, lowest control; SIVT and resale risk
Private marketplace (PMP) Invitation-only auction with a deal ID Named sellers; price floor; still auction-based
Preferred deal Fixed price, first look, not guaranteed Volume varies; check fill
Programmatic guaranteed Fixed price and volume, bought through the DSP Closest to a direct booking; needs the publisher's set-up
Working media Share of spend that reaches the publisher Needs log-level matching; otherwise NOT_ASSESSED
Unknown delta Spend that cannot be traced to any disclosed fee or publisher revenue 15% average in the 2020 UK study (register ISBA-PWC-PROGRAMMATIC-2020); not a benchmark for East Africa
Viewable impression 50% of pixels for 1 continuous second (display) or 2 seconds (video) Register MRC-VIEWABILITY-2015
GIVT / SIVT Invalid traffic found by routine lists / by advanced analytics Register MRC-IVT-2020

Outputs

Artefact Consumer Acceptance condition
Programmatic buying brief Media buyer, client approver Each line has route, deal type, targeting, supply-path rules, quality floors and reporting owner
Supply-path and fee audit Client finance owner, agency Each hop named with seller ID, relationship (DIRECT or RESELLER), fee and status, or NOT_ASSESSED
Brand-safety and suitability policy Client marketing and legal, verification vendor Floor, tiers per category, inclusion and exclusion lists, news and local-language rule
Delivery-quality specification Verification vendor, buyer Viewability standard, IVT filtration, attention method (if any) and make-good trigger
Post-flight transparency report template Client and agency Spend, working media, fees, unknown share, viewable rate, IVT rate and blocks per line

Evidence Produced

Evidence Format Acceptance condition
Supply-path record Table per seller and deal ads.txt, sellers.json and schain checks shown with date and source, or NOT_ASSESSED
Verification record Vendor export summary Vendor, accreditation status, measured rate and viewable rate stated separately
Suitability decision log Table Each tier choice and each exclusion has an owner and a reason
Source register citations Inline register IDs Every standard or market figure carries a register ID and date

Capability and Permission Boundaries

Read and search only; analysis is read-only. Publishing, spend, live account changes, outreach and personal-data processing need explicit, action-specific client authority. Creating deal IDs, changing DSP settings, uploading audience or device lists, signing insertion orders or contacting sellers also needs that authority, and regulated categories (gambling, alcohol, financial services, health, political) route to the legal and market release gate.

Degraded Mode

Without seller IDs, log-level data or fee disclosure, return the narrowest qualified result and mark the affected checks not assessed. The buying route, quality floors, suitability policy and a data request to the agency and SSPs can still be delivered; record each supply-path optimisation check as NOT_ASSESSED and never estimate a working-media share for the client.

Decision Rules

Condition Action Failure or risk avoided
The best local publishers are not sold programmatically Buy them direct or through a programmatic guaranteed deal where offered; use the exchange only for scale Paying for the long tail while missing the audience
A seller is not listed as authorised in the publisher's ads.txt or app-ads.txt, or its seller ID is absent from sellers.json Exclude the path Spoofed inventory and resold impressions
Mobile-app inventory with high volume, low price and unknown developers Require app-ads.txt, a bundle-ID list and SIVT filtration; cap spend until results are checked Made-for-advertising apps and device fraud
Keyword blocking would remove most news pages Replace blanket keywords with suitability tiers and a news inclusion list Defunding news publishers and losing reach
Attention or "quality" scores offered without viewability Refuse as a billing metric; accept as diagnostic on viewable impressions only Paying for unseen ads under a new name
CTV or DOOH delivery cannot be proved (no app list, no play logs) Buy only with proof-of-play or device-level reporting in the terms, or pause the line Paying for screens nobody watched or ads that never ran
The agency trades as principal (resells media it bought) Ask for written disclosure of margin and of the principal role before approval Undisclosed resale margin

Quality Standards

  • Every line names its buying route and deal type; open-exchange spend has a reason.
  • Viewability, IVT and suitability thresholds cite the standard and register ID; vendor figures are labelled "(Vendor)" and are never targets.
  • The supply-path audit shows each hop or NOT_ASSESSED; no working-media share is invented.
  • The suitability policy protects news and local-language publishers with an inclusion list, not only exclusions.
  • CTV, DOOH and audio each have a named proof-of-delivery source.
  • British English; UGX or named currency; East African supply limits stated, not assumed away.

Anti-Patterns

  • Buying the open exchange by default because it is cheap. Fix: price the same audience through PMP or direct publisher deals and compare cost per viewable, valid impression.
  • Reporting served impressions as delivery. Fix: report measured rate, viewable rate and IVT rate separately.
  • Blocking "election", "Covid" or "attack" across the whole buy. Fix: use suitability tiers and a news inclusion list.
  • Calling GARM a live standard or quoting its "certification". Fix: say GARM was discontinued in 2024 and name the framework as legacy vocabulary.
  • Treating attention scores as a replacement for viewability. Fix: require the viewability floor first, then use attention as a diagnostic.
  • Accepting "transparent pricing" without seller IDs or log-level data. Fix: request the path data and mark checks NOT_ASSESSED until it arrives.

References