What is brand safety, and which rules still apply in 2026?
Part of Brand suitability
The short answer
Brand safety is the set of practices and tools that keep a digital ad from appearing next to or inside content that could damage the advertiser's brand, such as hate speech, terrorism or illegal sales. It covers a shared floor that no advertiser should fund. Brand suitability then works above that floor, matching content to each brand's own tolerance.
Key takeaways
- The Media Rating Council defines brand safety as practices and tools that keep an ad out of a context that can damage the advertiser's brand.
- Brand safety covers the shared floor; suitability and compliance are separate questions with different owners.
- GARM's framework is a legacy reference, while MRC accreditation, TAG certification and the IAB Tech Lab taxonomy are still maintained as of October 2026.
- Since the MRC's October 2025 policy, a service accredited only for keyword or text checks at the domain level may not be marketed as brand safety.
- Ask each verification partner which accreditation it holds, at what level and for which environment.
How do industry bodies define brand safety?
Definition
- Brand safety
- Practices and tools that keep a digital ad from appearing next to, or within, content that can damage the advertiser's brand. The content in scope is the material that no brand should fund, whatever the product or message.
Three industry bodies have written definitions that buyers still quote, and they agree on the core while stressing different parts. Reading them side by side helps a planner explain to a client what a brand safety setting can and cannot promise.
| Source | Definition as written | What it stresses |
|---|---|---|
| Media Rating Council (MRC), content level supplement, September 2018 | Practices and tools “to ensure that a digital ad will not appear adjacent to or in a Context that can damage an advertiser's brand” | Adjacency and context, judged by parameters the advertiser sets |
| Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), as quoted in the IAB's December 2020 guide | “The controls that companies in the digital advertising supply chain use to protect brands against negative impacts on consumer opinion associated with specific types of content” | Controls held by companies across the supply chain, and the business cost of a mistake |
| IAB, Brand Safety and Suitability guide, December 2020 | Solutions that help a brand avoid content “generally considered to be inappropriate for any advertising, and unfit for publisher monetization regardless of the advertisement or brand” | A shared floor that is the same for all advertisers |
The MRC supplement (opens in a new tab) adds a point that matters in practice: different buyers have different avoidance categories and “different tolerance levels for risk depending on brand suitability.” Brand safety is the shared part. Everything above it is a choice the brand makes, which the brand suitability guide covers in depth.
Where did today's brand safety frameworks come from?
Much of the vocabulary in this timeline was set between 2012 and 2020, and several of the bodies behind it have changed since. It lists documents a planner may see cited in a request for proposal or a vendor deck, with what each one still means today.
| Date | What happened | What it means for a buyer now |
|---|---|---|
| February 2012 | The IAB and the MRC published the Guidelines for the Conduct of Ad Verification. Brand safety sat inside the site context service line, judged at the domain, site or URL level. | The site context line still frames domain and URL level checks. |
| September 2018 | The 4A's Advertiser Protection Bureau issued a brand safety floor framework, which the MRC describes as baseline definitions within 13 categories. | The idea of one floor shared by all advertisers dates from here. |
| September 2018 | The MRC issued its Enhanced Content Level Context and Brand Safety supplement, requiring content level analysis that goes beyond keywords to images, video, text and audio. | It is the standard behind content level accreditation. |
| September 2020 | GARM released its Brand Safety Floor and Suitability Framework with the 4A's bureau, and TAG released version 1.0 of its Brand Safety Certified guidelines. | The floor plus three risk levels became a shared structure. |
| December 2020 | IAB Tech Lab's Content Taxonomy 2.2 added a Sensitive Topics branch with four risk levels: Floor, High, Medium and Low. | Platforms could pass the same category labels and risk levels. |
| August 2024 | The World Federation of Advertisers discontinued GARM. | Its framework is a legacy reference, not an operating standard. |
| October 18, 2025 | The MRC issued a policy on how property level verification services may describe themselves. | The words brand safety now signal content level accreditation. |
| July 2026 | TAG released version 5.0 of the Brand Safety Certified guidelines. | Certification continues, with new transparency sections. |
Which brand safety frameworks still apply as of October 2026?
Five references are in use today, and they do different jobs. One is a vocabulary, two are audit programs, one is a legacy description of risk, and the last is the platforms' own rules about what they will monetize. A plan can cite all five, as long as it says which job each one does.
| Reference | Who maintains it | Status in October 2026 | How a buyer uses it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Safety Floor and Suitability Framework | Created under GARM; a copy is published by the Brand Safety Institute | Legacy reference. The WFA discontinued GARM in August 2024. | Shared wording for the floor and for high, medium and low risk |
| Content Taxonomy, Sensitive Topics branch | IAB Tech Lab | Maintained; version 3.1 keeps the Sensitive Topics branch | Shared category labels that platforms and tools can exchange |
| Enhanced Content Level Context and Brand Safety | Media Rating Council | Active accreditation standard, with the October 2025 naming policy | Checking what a verification service was audited for |
| Brand Safety Certified | TAG | Active; version 5.0 dated July 2026 | Checking whether a partner company holds the seal |
| Platform monetization policies | Each platform, for example Google Publisher Policies and YouTube's advertiser-friendly guidelines | Live documents that change over time | Knowing what a platform will not monetize at all |
The TAG Brand Safety Certified guidelines (opens in a new tab) show how the program moved on after 2024. Version 5.0 added sections on handling notices of illegal content, on crawler transparency and honoring robots.txt, and on demand and supply transparency. Certified companies must apply for recertification by January 31 each year. The guidelines also warn against the opposite failure: “neither buyers nor sellers are well served by mechanistic processes that may inadvertently block placement on brand-appropriate sites.”
How is brand safety different from brand suitability and brand compliance?
The IAB's December 2020 guide (opens in a new tab) names a third idea that can get folded into brand safety by mistake. Keeping it separate makes a plan easier to audit, because each layer fails in a different way and is fixed by a different person.
Definition
- Brand compliance
- Controls that keep a regulated product inside the rules that apply to it, such as limits by location for gambling or cannabis and limits by age for alcohol. In the IAB's words, they help brands “follow any regulatory guidelines present due to the nature of their product.”
Compliance is a legal question, not a content question. An ad for a regulated product can sit beside perfectly safe content and still break a rule because it ran in the wrong state or province or reached content aimed at minors. The IAB guide treats this as a zero tolerance area, where a buyer must be prepared to overblock and accept lower reach. Suitability can be the opposite case: under the guide's contextual alignment posture, a few borderline placements cost less than lost scale.
What did the MRC's October 2025 policy change about the term brand safety?
The MRC audits two different kinds of service. Property level ad verification classifies a domain or app from its text and keywords. Content level brand safety looks at the page or video itself, including images, video and audio. In its October 18, 2025 policy (opens in a new tab), the MRC said there was confusion in the market because property level services were being sold as brand safety.
The policy says vendors accredited only for property level verification based on text or keywords “are not permitted to position these services as Brand Safety” or as content level. It gave a six month grace period from the date of the letter, after which the MRC said it would stop continuing the accreditation of any vendor still doing so. Suitability language remains allowed for property level services with the right disclosures.
Questions to ask a verification partner in 2026
- Which MRC accreditation the service holds: property level, content level, or both.
- Which environments the accreditation covers, such as display, video, apps or a named platform.
- Which taxonomy and version the categories map to, and how the floor is defined.
- Whether blocks happen before the bid or after the impression is served.
- How news content is classified, and whether news pages can be exempted.
- Whether the company holds the TAG Brand Safety Certified seal for the market in the plan.
- Whether publishers can see why their pages were classified as they were.
What does a brand safety statement look like for a regulated brand?
Fictional example
A fictional online sportsbook in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
A fictional online sportsbook licensed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania asks its agency for a one page statement before a football season display and video campaign. The planner writes three short blocks instead of one long blocklist.
The safety block applies the floor in every category on every platform in the plan and cites the legacy framework's floor wording as the description. The suitability block accepts sports news, including injury and disciplinary stories, and avoids dramatized violence. The compliance block is owned by the client's legal team: ads run only in the two licensed states, never on content aimed at minors, and always carry the responsible gambling message the client's counsel approved.
When a placement report later shows impressions outside the licensed states, the team knows at once that it is a compliance failure in the geography settings, not a content problem, and the fix goes to the trading desk rather than the suitability settings.
How does PlacementGraph apply the brand safety floor?
Frequently asked questions
Is brand safety the same as ad fraud protection?
No. The 2012 IAB and MRC verification guidelines list fraud detection as its own service line, separate from the site context line where brand safety sits. Fraud checks ask whether a real person could see the ad. Brand safety asks whether the content around the ad could harm the brand. A placement can pass one check and fail the other.
Do advertisers still pay for impressions blocked after the bid?
It can happen. The IAB's 2020 guide says most brand safety and suitability tools block after the bid, and the advertiser still pays for the ad space even when a backup creative is shown. That is a reason to favor checks before the bid and vetted inclusion lists over blocking at the last moment.
Can a company be certified as brand safe?
A company can earn TAG's Brand Safety Certified seal by following its guidelines, and it must recertify each year. The MRC accredits measurement and verification services. Neither program certifies an individual campaign, site list or website as safe, so a plan should name the program and the company that holds it.
Does brand safety only look at the text on a page?
It should not. The MRC's 2018 supplement says content level measurement must go beyond keyword analysis to include images, video, text and audio. A page with harmless text can carry a graphic image, and a video's risk can sit in what is shown or said rather than in its title or description.
Why did the WFA discontinue GARM?
The WFA's August 2024 announcement said recent allegations that misconstrued GARM's purpose and activities had caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances. It described GARM as a small, not for profit initiative and said it was making the difficult decision to discontinue its activities.
Sources
- MRC Ad Verification Supplement: Enhanced Content Level Context and Brand Safety (September 2018) (opens in a new tab)Media Rating Council
- Policy for Property-Level Ad Verification Representations (opens in a new tab)Media Rating Council, October 18, 2025
- Understanding Brand Safety and Brand Suitability in a Contemporary Media Landscape (opens in a new tab)IAB, December 2020
- Brand Safety Certified Guidelines, version 5.0 (opens in a new tab)TAG (Trustworthy Accountability Group), July 2026
- Brand Safety Floor + Suitability Framework (opens in a new tab)Brand Safety Institute
- Implementation Guide for Brand Suitability with the Content Taxonomy 2.2 (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab, December 2020
- Content Taxonomy (opens in a new tab)IAB Tech Lab
- WFA discontinues GARM (opens in a new tab)World Federation of Advertisers, August 9, 2024
Researched and written by PlacementGraph Research. Read how we research, source and update these pages. Corrections: diana@placementgraph.com.