Meta is giving Threads advertisers more brand safety options, with an expansion of its support for third-party block lists to ad placements in the app. These controls are already available for ads on Meta’s other platforms.
Block lists created by brand safety and measurement providers are vetted, independently verified listings of safe ad placements, ensuring promotions are not displayed alongside objectionable content in an app. These block lists ensure safe placement for ads, while also eliminating the manual effort of searching and excluding certain profiles and/or categories.
Threads block lists will be facilitated by Meta’s brand safety partners DoubleVerify, IAS, Scope3 and Zefr.
As explained by Meta: “This control can be layered on top of Meta’s inventory filter or used independently. While these controls help to maintain individualized brand suitability standards, more than 99% of content next to ads in Feed continues to be brand safe across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, as independently measured by our brand safety and suitability partners.”
That’s an impressive stat, though brands should also be cautious about taking reports like this at face value.
That’s because, as any experienced digital marketer would know, almost every platform gets a “99%” brand safety tick of assessment. Reddit reported the same, based on DoubleVerify assessment in 2024, as did X.
So why is that number always so high?
Well, it’s partially because the platforms themselves play a role in these assessments, in providing the data used.
As reported by Business Insider: “Unlike on the open web, verifiers don’t have a direct line of access to crawl the so-called walled gardens such as Meta, YouTube, and X. That leaves open the possibility that tech platforms can cherry-pick the data for the likes of DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to rubber-stamp, experts have said.”
As such, that 99% claim may not be entirely indicative of general placement safety, but based on what these third-party platforms can verify, almost all ad placement in each app should be brand safe.
Either way, block lists provide another means to manage ad placement and maintain a distance between promotions and controversial content.
In addition, Meta said it’s also expanding its partner ecosystem to give advertisers more choices in how they verify and manage the suitability of their ad placements.
“Advertisers will be able to work with both Channel Factory and Protected by Mediaocean in the coming months for brand safety and suitability verification and control,” Meta said.
These additional tools should provide more peace of mind in ensuring promoted content isn’t displayed next to offensive material in each app.
