Meta Ad Placement Controls For Brand Safety (& Better Relevancy)
These tools were announced by Meta well over a year ago now, and while I have dabbled a little with block lists for larger brands, I was interested in what I was missing with this feature, and how I could learn more and apply it better for other accounts. This is how Meta explains the Ad Placement Controls:
Brand safety and suitability keep your ads away from content that may cause negative associations. Meta applies brand safety to all ads by default, so content that's excessively controversial or offensive is always excluded, regardless of which settings you choose. Brand suitability controls let you adjust which types of content are a good fit for your specific brand.
Why Would I Use Brand Safety Controls on Meta?
To have ads appear next to relevant content - just as Meta explains, this section is designed for advertisers to have more control over where ads get shown, by the use of inventory filters, block lists, content type exclusions, and more.
To improve engagement metrics - by having the ability to block publishers who aren’t relevant to your brand, or would result in a conflicting message, etc. this could have a positive impact on CTR and other engagement metrics. An example I can think of is blocking content aimed at young children, if you are a brand only relevant to adults (which I feel would be most brands advertising on Meta…?).
To understand where my ads are being shown - by using the delivery report, you can see which content your ads have appeared next to, and how frequently they have over a period of time. Both publisher, and content downloads are available to export; the publisher report consolidates data for a particular user, while the content report shows the name of the actual content (which helps to gauge the context or theme of a particular publisher).
How To Use Brand Safety Controls on Meta
Access the Brand Safety and Suitability Controls section - All Tools (burger menu on left panel) > Manage Business > Brand Safety and Suitability.
Overview - as expected, this just shows an overview of the control setting you have set up for each ad account.
Controls - this is where you can create top level controls, such as changing the current filter settings for each placement format, or exclude content types; exclude live videos, exclude ads on reels from non-partner publishers, etc.
Block Lists - block lists can be pages, profiles, or apps, and can be applied to all or just some of your accounts. Use block lists to ensure your ads will never appear next to content you choose - being block-happy could obviously limit your reach though.
A publisher allow list also exists, and your ads will only show next to these publishers.
Partner-publisher Lists - this shows a list of all the accounts that have signed up for monetisation, and shows the the publishers who have ads running during their live videos.
Delivery Reports - finally, and probably the most important section for me, is actually seeing where my ads have shown, which gives me the data and the insight to use all the features above more effectively.