Facebook is building tools to help advertisers keep their advertising space away from certain topics in its News Feed.
The company said it would begin testing “subject ban” controls with a small group of advertisers. He said, for example, that a children’s toy company would be able to avoid content related to “crime and tragedy,” if it so wished. Other topics include “news & politics” and “social issues.”
The company said development and testing of the devices would take “much of the year.”
Facebook, along with players like YouTube and Google Twitter, has been working with marketers and organizations through an organization called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to improve standards in this area. They have been working on actions that help “the safety of consumers and advertisers,” including defining definitions of harmful content, standards for reporting, independent oversight and agree to make tools that better manage ad adacency.
The tools for Facebook News Feed build on devices running on other areas of the platform, such as in-stream video or on their Audience Network, which allows software developers introduce advertising ads targeted at users based on Facebook data.
The idea of “brand safety” is important for any advertiser who wants to ensure that their company’s ads are not close to specific topics. But there has been a growing demand from the advertising industry to make platforms like Facebook safer not just near their advertising outlets.
The head of the World Federation of Advertisers, who created GARM, told CNBC last summer that it was a morph from “brand safety” to put more focus on “social safety.” The crux though where ads do not appear in or alongside specific videos, many platforms are heavily funded by ad dollars. In other words, ad-supported content helps to subsidize all ad-free content. And many advertisers say they feel responsible for what happens on the web with support.
That was made clear enough last summer, when a number of advertisers blocked their advertising dollars from Facebook, urging the platform to take tougher steps to stop the spread hate speech and misinformation on his platform. Some of those advertisers just didn’t want their ads to stay away from hateful or discriminatory content, they wanted a plan to ensure that content was completely off-platform.
Twitter is working on its own in-feed brand safety tools, he said in December.