User generated content brand safety: when is a forum worth keeping?

Why is user generated content riskier for brands?

Three things set UGC apart from edited content. A post can go live before anyone approves it. The page changes after it is checked, sometimes within minutes. And the volume can be too large to read by hand. The Media Rating Council's 2018 brand safety supplement (opens in a new tab) names the same problems: reduced control of content compared with publisher curated content, scale that likely requires automation subject to error, and a need for data refresh because assessments of dynamic UGC lose accuracy over time.

Responsibility sits in different places in law and in ad policy. In the United States, Section 230 (opens in a new tab) says no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of information provided by another content provider, and it protects good faith action to restrict objectionable material. Ad platforms set their own rules on top. Google's AdSense guidance (opens in a new tab) tells publishers they are responsible for ensuring that all user generated content on their site complies with its program policies on pages that carry its ad code. For a buyer, that makes a site's moderation effort part of the inventory, not a background detail.

Which moderation signals can a buyer check on a forum?

Much of a forum's moderation is visible from the outside. Google's strategies for managing user generated content (opens in a new tab) recommend a published content policy, a report a violation link beside each post, a captcha before posting, screening posts from new users until they build a track record, limiting what untrusted users can post, recruiting user moderators, employing human reviewers, and turning off ads on pages until posts are approved. Each of these leaves a trace a buyer can look for.

The last item is technical but quick to check in a page's source. Google Search asks sites to mark links in comments and forum posts (opens in a new tab) with the ugc value. A forum that does so has at least thought about what its users post. Larger communities may also follow the Santa Clara Principles (opens in a new tab) on content moderation, which ask for understandable rules, cultural competence among moderators, notice to users whose posts are actioned, a meaningful appeal and published numbers. A site that publishes moderation numbers gives a buyer evidence a homepage cannot.

Should comment sections affect a site's suitability?

Yes, but with a sense of proportion. The MRC supplement says comments should be considered and included in content level brand safety decisions, and that verification services should take care over the weight comments carry, since keywords in comments may be classified differently from the content itself. Any use of comments in those decisions must be empirically supported and disclosed. In practice, a careful report on a sensitive subject should not drop a tier because a few readers wrote angry replies beneath it.

Three patterns justify a lower tolerance for a site's comments: abuse that stays up for days, moderators who are absent from heated threads, and comment sections that dominate the page more than the article does. One pattern justifies leaving a strong article in the plan despite poor comments: a publisher that has closed comments on sensitive stories, which shows the editors are managing the risk themselves.

When are community sites worth keeping in a plan?

Community sites can hold readers a brand wants: hobbyists comparing equipment, patients sharing experience of a condition, tradespeople answering each other's questions. Their posts can be specific to the brand's subject. Removing all sites with user posts removes this audience along with the risk. The choice is easier when two factors are weighed together: how sensitive the community's topic is, and how strong its moderation looks.

Buying systems carry a little of this information. The AdCOM list of production qualities (opens in a new tab) used by OpenRTB has a value of 3 for user generated content, beside professionally produced and prosumer, though publishers fill it in and can leave it unknown. Google's content suitability page (opens in a new tab) notes that it may classify apps such as user generated content apps by their main function rather than by the content shown in them, so a buyer cannot rely on the label alone.

How do you review a forum before adding it?

Our guides to content adjacency and to the brand safety floor cover what counts as next to an ad and which content no brand should fund, both of which apply to community pages in the same way as to edited ones.

What does a UGC review look like on a real plan?

How does PlacementGraph read sites that host user posts?