Dive Brief:

• Facebook is launching a new brand safety certification within its Facebook Marketing Partners program to help advertisers on the platform review content options and have control over where their ads will appear, the company announced in a blog post.
• Ad measurement platform DoubleVerify and OpenSlate, a video content rating platform, are the first two companies to be certified. The certification is in connection to new brand safety tools that the companies are releasing, Marketing Land reported.
• DoubleVerify offers marketing measurement software, data and analytics to authenticate digital media's quality and effectiveness. The OpenSlate content ratings system allows marketers to visualize, optimize and automate targeting decisions on video platforms. OpenSlate will provide "safety and suitability assessments" for Facebook's in-stream, ad-supported content, use block lists to exclude brand-safety content and update block lists daily, according to Marketing Land. DoubleVerify announced a new brand safety tool that will work through a Facebook API to monitor in-stream video inventory, Instant Articles and Audience Network content, and will update block lists daily and automate brand safety controls.

Dive Insight:

The new brand safety certification aims to give Facebook advertisers more options for managing their brand safety controls. The program is part of Facebook's ongoing efforts to boost transparency on its platform and offer an extra layer of security for advertisers to help them ensure that their content doesn't appear next to offensive or unsavory content. The launch of the new tool comes as Facebook is still reeling from its high profile Cambridge Analytica scandal and trying to regain trust from advertisers and users. Forty-five percent of advertisers think social media platforms do a bad job on brand safety, and 94% are worried about brand safety on the platform, according to Advertiser Perceptions and Oath research.

Facebook has been rolling out new features to improve brand safety on the platform, including offering publishing lists and publisher delivery reports that marketers can use to create block lists that remove publishers and apps from ad delivery. The publisher delivery reports let advertisers see a list of publisher sites where their ads appear. The social media site was also reportedly testing a program to give marketers the chance to purchase ads on the videos Facebook considers to be the most brand-safe for $750,000. Facebook is also cracking down on ads with low-quality and disruptive content that asks users to engage with it by requesting likes, comments and shares.

Even though many advertisers haven't pulled their Facebook ads in the wake of its security issues, the new certification could potentially attract more advertisers to the platform. Eighty-five percent of marketers say improving brand safety in their digital campaigns is a priority, but 64% say they struggle to implement an effective brand safety strategy, according to Sizmek research. Facebook has reported increases in ad revenue, but revenue growth is decelerating, and the company expected future deceleration.