The recent Adalytics report on ad tech vendors serving ads on a website that hosts child sexual abuse material (CSAM) put the industry on notice.

The time for excuses is over. Brand safety isn’t a box to be checked; it’s a commitment that must be embedded into every stage of the supply chain. And we need the whole industry to step up.

Jonas Jaanimagi

The challenges of brand safety are not new. I vividly recall the chaos of 11th September 2001, when my trafficking team had no choice but to shut down all campaigns for 48 hours, running only house ads to avoid placing brands next to distressing content. It was a blunt-force solution, but in the absence of sophisticated tools, it was the best we could do.

Fast-forward more than two decades, and while our technology has advanced dramatically, the core issue remains the same. To be clear, this is not a technological failure—it is a failure of responsibility. The tools exist to mitigate these risks, but they are only as effective as the people using them. If brand safety is still being treated as an afterthought, that is a choice, not an inevitability.

Brand........

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