Santa Monica, CA, November 12th 2021: GumGum, Inc., a global media and technology company that specializes in contextual intelligence, today released data indicating that a majority of online content containing keywords related to climate change is actually safe for brand advertising. The findings come from analysis by Verity, the companyâs accredited contextual intelligence engine. Over a 30-day period, Verity identified almost 1.2 million unique pages containing climate change-related keywords across GumGumâs publisher network. Of those pages, the systemâs threat detection models classified 58.5% as âSafeâ.
âChoosing to use keyword blocking when better technology is available is reckless. There are better, more technologically advanced ways to ensure brand safety without overblocking perfectly safe content. Publishers shouldnât have to limit their coverage of important topics like COVID, George Floyd, or climate change because of monetization issues. The next era of advertising will require brands to find their voice and stance on polarizing topics rather than backing away from them, â said Phil Schraeder, Chief Executive Officer, GumGum.
In one month alone, brands utilizing broad blocklists to avoid coverage around climate change, missed out on 52.8 million impressions across GumGumâs supply, Schraeder pointed out, adding that GumGumâs publisher network offers a representative sample of impressions available across the wider web. Brands would have been blocked from accessing those impressions because the web pages contained one or more instances of the words or phrases âclimateâ, âclimate changeâ, âgreenhouse gasâ, âclimate crisisâ or âmelting ice capsâ.
Verity deemed them brand safe based on multi-model natural language processing and computer vision analysis. The systemâs threat sensitivity is adjustable as is its confidence threshold for validating safety conclusions. The findings are based on Verityâs nominal safety and confidence settingsââconfigured to align with the threat sensitivity of an average Fortune 100 brand.
âAdvertisers are right to be concerned about dangerous or controversial content online, but overzealous use of keyword blocklists is the wrong approach,â said GumGumâs Head of Verity, William Merchan. âRather than blocking pages or entire sites based on broad keywords, advertisers need to be using tools which can analyze all of the data within digital environments to properly identify whatâs a threat and what isnât.â
Merchan noted that GumGumâs analysis shows that the pages containing climate change keywords in certain popular IAB content categories are particularly safe. âRather than keyword blocking, if advertisers want extra security, they should simply target the safest content categories like âauto technologyâ, âautomotiveâ and âgreen solutionsâ, where over 85% of the content is brand safe.â
For more information, please reach out to pr@gumgum.com
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About GumGum
GumGum is a global technology and media company specializing in contextual intelligence. For over a decade, we have applied our proven machine learning expertise to extract value from digital content for the advertising and sports industries. Our proprietary contextual intelligence engine uses computer vision and natural language processing technologies to scan text, images and videos when evaluating digital content. Combining our contextual advertising intelligence with proprietary high-impact ad formats, GumGumâs advertising solutions deliver industry leading efficiency, accuracy and performance.
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