Brand Safety and Ad Placement Policy

A. OVERVIEW

Captify is committed to providing the highest possible levels of brand safety for clients and advertisers and minimizing the risk of ad misplacement in line with industry standards. Captify follows the Digital Trading Standards Group’s (DTSG) Good Practice Principles, which are endorsed by the UK’s Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS), which is now part of the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) family. Captify are also committed to reducing fraud in the digital ad eco-system and follow TAG principles in reducing digital ad-fraud.

TAG is an advertising initiative created to fight criminal activity across the digital advertising supply chain and provides a variety of certifications and resources to support this goal. In addition to attaining the TAG Certified Against Fraud seal.

This document sets out the brand protection policies and anti-fraud policies that we adhere to for every campaign we run.

B. THIRD PARTY CONTENT VERIFICATION TOOLS

Captify uses independently-certified third party content verification tools. Captify’s current partners are DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science (together, the “third party verifier”), who provide the following:

AD BLOCKING SOLUTION:

Analysis and scoring of individual web pages against key content categories. Captify can customize risk thresholds based on the scores obtained, and control the type of content appropriate for our advertisers as ads are passed or blocked on the individual page level in real-time against all or selected categories.

PRE-BID SOLUTION:

Captify utilises the third party verifier’s setting’s pre-bid data to allow targeting around brand safety and ad viewability within programmatic auction processes. This is designed to ensure that ads will only appear on appropriate content that has been classified as “safe” before we place, display or win bids within auctions. The third party verifier makes classifications and predictions of a page’s safety rate based on certain criteria. We apply the strictest settings against each criteria, as well as block un-rateable inventory sources as well as sites which have a high score against suspicious activity.

SEMANTIC BLOCKING:

Utilise Peer39 to create custom semantic segments which allow us to block. This can be used against standard categories as well as protect any specific business rules (i.e. Brands not appearing against negative content e.g. terrorism, illegal activities, guns, drugs, disasters, etc)

C. APPROPRIATE / INAPPROPRIATE SCHEDULES (EXCLUSION LISTS & INCLUSION LISTS)

To minimize the risk of ad misplacement, Captify also uses appropriate and inappropriate schedules, also known as “exclusion lists” and “inclusion lists”.

EXCLUSION LISTS:

Captify’s exclusion list includes thousands of websites whose content we or the third party verifiers consider to be inappropriate. This exclusion list is regularly updated. Every campaign runs against this master exclusion list in addition to the Ad blocking and Pre-bid protection referred to in section B.

INCLUSION LISTS:

Captify’s inclusion list includes thousands of websites that have been manually verified by us or the third party verifiers. It is possible to run a campaign against this inclusion list only, by agreement.

ADVERTISER AND AGENCY EXCLUSION LISTS AND INCLUSION LISTS:

Additionally, by agreement with our clients, Captify can apply bespoke inclusion lists and/or exclusion lists corresponding to a particular advertiser’s brand guidelines.

D. TAKE-DOWN POLICY

The application of this policy is designed to ensure that brand misplacement does not occur. In the event Captify becomes aware of an ad appearing on a site that is considered inappropriate, then Captify will as soon as practicable take down the ad. The contractual consequences of this are as agreed with the client in each case, but as standard Captify will normally discount such placement against the current or a future campaign or make no charge for that placement.

If you have any questions about any of the information contained in this document please contact your Captify account manager or email info@captify.co.uk

E. FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY COMPLAINT PROCEDURE

As part of our commitment to reducing ad-fraud, we have a dedicated procedure for our partners who suspect any kind of criminal activity. In the event Captify becomes aware of an ad appearing on a site that is considered fraudulent, then Captify will as soon as practicable take down the ad. The contractual consequences of this are as agreed with the client or publisher partner.

If you have any complaints as a Publisher or Advertiser about any of the activity associated with Captify’s buying and you would like to register a complaint about perceived fraudulent activity; please contact your Captify account manager or email info@captify.co.uk

Updated: 6 January 2021