How Twitter Is Raising The Bar On Brand Safety

As a platform where people come to participate in conversations, connect with others, and get information they can trust, Twitter takes its responsibility to protect people seriously. That’s why the company’s top priority is to create a healthier environment for people and brands.

Angus Keene, Twitter’s acting managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said: “At Twitter, brand safety means human safety. After all, people are at the core of the public conversation, and our purpose is to serve the public conversation. 

“People come to Twitter to tell us what they care about, and what matters to them most. They use their voices to impact businesses and the world around us, and we need to find more ways to support them and keep them safe.”

Ultimately, the evolution of brand safety should reflect the evolution of humanity. As a frontrunner in brand safety, Twitter has taken a comprehensive approach to protect people and brands as they evolve.

Specifically, the company is setting a new standard on brand safety by focusing on three key areas: policies that lead, products that protect, and partnerships that drive industry-wide change.

These areas ensure brands can use the platform with confidence that their ads won’t appear alongside sensitive, false, misleading, or objectionable content — which comes back to the integrity of Twitter as a platform that values quality conversations.

 Staying committed and true to this, Twitter has introduced various products and tools to encourage safe and healthy conversation, including article prompts, conversation settings, and Birdwatch. 

Last year, Twitter launched article prompts to encourage people to read beyond the headline. This helps people get an in-depth understanding of the news before they share it — ultimately minimising the spread of misinformation and maximising the reach of credible content. Since launching this feature, Twitter has seen a 33 per cent increase in people opening articles before deciding to Retweet them. 

With powerful conversation settings, brands have control over the quality of the conversations they’re starting, with the ability to choose who can reply to their promoted Tweets to ensure discussions are healthy and relevant. As of March 2021, more than 11 million people have taken advantage of this setting.

Meanwhile, Birdwatch — a community-based approach to preventing misinformation — allows people to identify information in Tweets they believe are false or misleading, as well as write notes to provide additional informative context. This ensures that misleading Tweets are not being spread widely, and that people have information they can trust and find valuable. 

Brands and publishers who share video content on the platform are a big part of the conversations happening on Twitter.

To ensure content that is positioned for monetisation is brand safe and for an extra layer of protection, Twitter manually reviews publishers’ video content to ensure they comply with the platform’s Monetisation Standards prior to serving the ad. During this process, if the content is considered non-compliant, it will be removed from being monetised. 

Twitter’s focus on transparency has gone a long way in building trust with people and brands. It was one of the first platforms to begin publishing regular Transparency Reports in 2012, which transformed into a highly interactive Twitter Transparency Centre in August 2020. The centre provides a window into the work Twitter is doing to enforce Twitter Rules, protect privacy, navigate information requests, and more.

Keene said: “Twitter has long been a platform that allows advertisers to connect with engaged audiences. Ad partners can promote content to specific users, and target ads based on how people use Twitter.

“Our Brand Safety policies, products, and partnerships are an extension of that, allowing advertisers to cultivate a healthy environment for connecting with the community.”