Media Buying Briefing: From deepfakes to political leanings, agencies create brand safety products to flag creator risks

“The issue, honestly, is that influencer marketing is scaling,” said Kevin King, chief revenue officer of creator agency Viral Nation. “A lot of the clients that we were working with two years ago were maybe working with a handful of influencers — those now they’re working with hundreds. We actually have some clients that are working with thousands of influencers.”

There’s more at stake

The scope of creator programs also needs to be wider than ever, which inherently increases the risks of poorly aligning content with messaging — as factors include a U.S. presidential election, AI-generated content and more creators creating their own brands. Global influencer marketing ad spend is projected to reach some $35 billion this year — with the market seeing an annual growth rate of just under 10%, per Statista.

“With creators being active in these conversations, we’ve been receiving more requests from brands for political vetting to be added to the due diligence process for creator campaigns over the last few months,” said Ed East, group CEO and co-founder of influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy.

Billion Dollar Boy’s recent research found that one in four (28%) of U.S. creators have been approached by political organizations to create political content for this election year. The agency uses its influencer tool Companion in the vetting process.

Using AI to detect risks and history

Viral Nation this month released a new version of its AI-powered brand safety tool called Secure 2.0. — updated with the latest models of Google Gemini, the tech giant’s generative AI chatbot. The product mainly targets brands, but Viral Nation said it is also exploring partnerships with agencies.

This updated software can now analyze up to 15 years’ worth of data around a creator’s entire public history to assess brand safety and fit — scanning for potential risks like hate speech, drug use and other sensitive content to ensure creators align with a brand’s values.

“A platform is not necessarily going to ban somebody for taking a very strong specific political stance on a particular issue, because they do run into the free speech space,” King explained. “But a brand doesn’t necessarily want to associate with somebody who’s taken that particular stance. So the platform monitoring tools do a great job, but aren’t necessarily aligned with the brand specific values.”

Secure 2.0 also analyzes content by topic, style and age rating, identifying paid and unpaid brand mentions to ensure brand safety — while it identifies creators who will resonate with the brand’s target audience. It analyzes videos by frames, images and audio, and is designed to be a proactive tool for brands to protect their reputations when working with creators. It also now includes multilingual analysis for global campaigns.

Viral Nation sees use cases that go wider than just seeking out problematic content: For example, with one sneaker client, the creator that wanted to work with that brand said they had no conflicts. The tool found that the creator was already representing a competitor.

“It is a case-by-case basis, [but this] issue was that it wasn’t disclosed at that initial point,” King added. “It might be fine, but it’s the fact that it wouldn’t have been known to be asked had our technology not caught it.”

Other proactive measures

Whether it’s human teams or tech, ultimately there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all when it comes to vetting a creator, as it can depend on the brand alignment, agency approach and type of creator program. For example, Stagwell business agency Gale employs a mix of outside safety tools and its own manual process to check a creator’s background and content. Currently, Gale is taking a more cautious approach by not working with any creators producing content assisted with AI, while also avoiding political content in their creator campaigns.

“[AI] can be a huge opportunity, but it can also be something that we personally need to put new guidelines around,” said Erin Lyden, vp of public relations and influencer at Gale and co-lead of the agency’s social marketing team. “When it comes to briefing in creators, we actually have a clause within our contract that they can’t use AI — when we go to a creator, we want to go to that for that specific reason and for their creative.”

Creator marketing agency Open Influence uses a proprietary tool for scanning too — reviewing historical creator content to detect keywords, “divisive political or religious references or content that is violent or sexual in nature,” noted Maggie Reznikoff, svp of account management at Open Influence. The agency also incorporates safety guidelines into creator contracts — with elements like restricted timeframes that prohibit creators from posting political content directly before and after the branded posts, for instance.

“This allows us to quickly weed out potential creators that don’t meet brand safety requirements,” Reznikoff said. “For any AI-enabled brand safety tactic, layering on contextual analysis is critical to get it right and avoid false positives.”

Amy Cotteleer, partner and chief experience officer at agency Duncan Channon emphasized using public record searches to avoid any surprises — but also using creator software to understand their audience.  

“How many [of their audience] are real versus potentially purchased?” Cotteleer said. “How is their engagement rate? Are they getting consistent views?”

Color by numbers

Gaming continues to be a primary source of attention for young adults but given its long tenure as a media option, its audience has expanded to older groups as well — those who grew up gaming but never gave it up. Dentsu recently assembled some vital stats around this massive segment, one that keeps growing its advertising potential, but somehow still remains a slight mystery to unlock for mainstream advertisers. Some stats from the report:

• About 2.4 billion people worldwide use a device to play games; of that total, 654 million purchased video game content in the last month across 53 markets. The average age of a “gamer” is 37 (up from 33 in 2015);
• In Q2 2024, gaming livestreaming rose 10% to more than 8.5 billion hours watched across all streaming platforms. And yet, gaming attracts less than 5% of total ad spend;
• Three-quarters of luxury buyers are gamers, with over 55% using their smartphones to play games.
• Gaming is offers a strong opportunity for transmedia IP: 51% of people feel favorable about entertainment franchises expanding into gaming; two out of three gamers switch between gaming and entertainment content within the same hour.

Takeoff & landing

• A quick roundup of the holding companies Q3 earnings: Publicis clocked in at 5.8% organic revenue growth, while North American revenue ticked upward at 4.7%. Omnicom meanwhile, hit 6.5% organic revenue growth for the quarter, with the U.S. business achieving the same rate of growth. On the slower end of growth, IPG‘s organic revenue hit 1% — but the holding company didn’t break out regional numbers. WPP, meanwhile, returned to a bit of growth as well, if modest, with organic revenue growth overall of 0.5%, but more upbeat news out of GroupM, which hit 4.8% growth. Havas looked the weakest, with shrinkage in North America of -7.5%. Dentsu will report on Nov. 13. 
• IPG’s Mediabrands landed three wins last week: it picked up biotech firm Amgen’s U.S. media business, as well as media duties in Australia for DuluxGroup, which owns several gardening and industrial brands. And sibling Mediahub picked up media duties for Little Caesars pizza chain.  
• Two audio agencies, Oxford Road and Veritone One, are being bought by Insignia Capital Group to form a combined podcast specialty agency offering, with the ultimate goal of merging the two.
• Crossmedia picked up global media partner duties for European online fashion site Zalando. Work includes enhancing global strategy, planning and local market coordination, as Zalando continues to grow its business across Europe.
• Personnel moves: The Shipyard hired Patti Ziegler as its new managing partner; she was most recently CMO at Scotts Miracle Gro … Kepler Group hired Chris O’Brien as evp, head of client solutions; he comes over from Omnicom Media Group, where he was managing director, global client lead … Australian media agency Atomic 212°‘s national CEO Claire Fenner resigned; the search for a new CEO is underway.

Direct quote

“As an industry, we need to give more grace with our clients around decisions, and ask better questions around context. Because you could present a brilliant creative idea and if it is put into the market in the wrong business infrastructure, it’s a terrible idea. I don’t think enough creative teams understand the business context, and there’s not enough business context that understands the need for creative and long term brand building.”

— Holly Willis, co-founder of independent ad and marketing consultancy Magic Camp, on the need to break down silos within brands.

Speed reading

• Michael Bürgi assembled a series of on-background quotes from the Digiday Media Buying Summit that addressed the challenges and opportunities around media agencies experiencing scope creep from their clients.
• Bürgi also secured an on-background conversation with a high-level media agency executive who talked about Google’s pervasive presence across the buying and selling of media and marketing — and the impact that’s had on the industry.
• I wrote about how Studio71 is looking to increase creators’ involvement and adjacency to CTV advertising.
• Kimeko McCoy covered Mondelēz International’s move to build an AI unit in-house with the assistance of Publicis Groupe and Accenture.