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SPECIAL REPORT: Brand Safety Always Fails, Whose Fault Is it?
Are DoubleVerify and IAS a Billion Dollar Insurance Scams?
Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT)
February 11, 2025
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Brand Safety Always Fails—So Who’s Really to Blame?
If you’re an advertiser, mazal tov—you’ve probably poured obscene amounts of money into a brand safety solution that never worked, doesn’t work, and, let’s be honest, was never designed to work. The latest Adalytics report doesn’t just pull back the curtain; it rips it down and sets it on fire. Turns out, the industry’s worst-kept secret is still a secret to the people signing the checks: so-called brand safety vendors like IAS and DoubleVerify are making billions while brands keep showing up next to child exploitation, hate speech, and every flavor of internet garbage imaginable.
We spoke to people across the industry, and the consensus was deafening: these systems are a joke, everyone knows they’re a joke, and yet we all pretend they work because saying otherwise would be admitting the emperor isn’t just naked—he’s doing the electric slide down Madison Avenue. Every quarter, brands hemorrhage cash into these black boxes of nonsense metrics and dashboard theater, all so some VP can smugly answer, Of course, we use [insert overpriced fraud machine here].
Because saying anything else would be career suicide.
Let’s be real. These tools aren’t about protection; they’re about plausible deniability. They’re expensive rubber stamps for execs who need to look like they’re taking action. Reports get generated, nodded at, and swiftly ignored while real decisions get made based on Slack messages, gut instinct, and whatever half-baked hot take someone skimmed on LinkedIn that morning. But hey, at least the invoices get paid on time.
Because when the CEO storms in demanding to know why their brand just showed up next to something so toxic it makes Reddit’s mod team sweat, that VP needs their one lifeline: We followed protocol. We used the tools. It’s not our fault.
And that, folks, is brand safety in 2024.
Erez Levin is direct about brand safety. In a recent post, he made it clear:
Erez Levin isn’t here to soothe fragile egos or offer the usual industry cop-outs. He’s spelling out the problem in neon lights: brands keep whining about ad misplacements, yet they refuse to take the one painfully obvious step to fix it.
The Multi-Billion Dollar Illusion
Let’s talk numbers. IAS and DoubleVerify are making a killing off brand safety, with a combined market value of over $4 billion. Their revenue growth is relentless:
IAS: 35% adjusted EBITDA margins
DoubleVerify: 32% adjusted EBITDA margins
Annual brand safety spend across the industry? $1 billion+
Where’s all that money going? Certainly not into technology. IAS invests only 15% of revenue into actual product development, while DoubleVerify manages 25.3%—but their biggest expense? Sales and marketing.
As Ben Shepherd wrote:
“It does suggest these businesses are much more about sales and marketing than they are about technology. It’s especially unusual given the minefield technologically that is ‘brand safety’ and the repeated demonstrations of this method failing completely.”