Meta Partners with Zefr to Improve Advertiser Brand Suitability And Advertising Safety Tools

Meta has announced a significant improvement for advertisers in the area of brand compatibility for content-based controls and Feed verification.

Certain advertisers' wishes for avoiding having their advertisements shown around specific kinds of content on Meta platforms are taken into account by the content-based controls and verification for Feed.

The solutions were created to provide advertisers with an awareness of the sorts of material that show alongside their advertisements and allow them to achieve their marketing objectives in a brand-safe environment while being sensitive to the content that appears on the platform.

Zefr was chosen as the first partner to provide impartial information on the context in which Facebook Feed advertisements appear.

In Feed, Meta and Zefr will work together to create a system that will measure and validate the compatibility of adjacent content to adverts.

In the third quarter of this year, this solution will go through a small-scale testing phase before being released with selective access in the fourth quarter.

"The future of the ad industry is moving towards transparent and accurate measurement for brand safety and suitability in complex environments, based on the GARM [Global Alliance for Responsible Media] standards," stated Rich Raddon, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Zefr. "Zefr is thrilled to partner with Meta to develop the first suitability measurement product for Feed, giving advertisers deeper transparency into their content adjacencies across Meta”.

The tool can be used in conjunction with third-party brand safety measurement services currently available.

According to Meta, it will also work to make the brand suitability integration option available to all badged partners.

"Meta and Zefr's partnership is a welcome step that gives advertisers and agencies post-campaign transparency for Feed – a format that has been difficult to measure for some time," says Rob Rakowitz, GARM Initiative Lead, World Federation of Advertisers.

Meta has begun work on new Facebook and Instagram Feed controls aimed specifically at English-speaking areas, with intentions to test them in the second half of the year before releasing them expansively in early 2023.

Over the coming year, the company will increase placement coverage across Facebook and Instagram to encompass Stories, Reels, Video Feeds, Instagram Explore, and other areas, and also grow into other languages.