Ad Industry Grapples With the Brand-Safety Void Left by GARM

For five years, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) played the critical role of arbiter for brand safety standards. It was a fraught job in the advertising industry, and an occasional forum for brands and tech firms to work out their differences, three sources told ADWEEK.

The disbanding of GARM—due to a lack of resources to defend itself against the lawsuit by X, formerly Twitter—has left a void for an authoritative voice on the widely acceptable standards for thorny brand safety questions that will not easily be filled, sources said. Still, some elements can be improved on—like maintaining independence—as the industry finds the next iteration.

“Before GARM, no one had a common definition of anything,” said one adtech executive and former GARM member, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive industry relations. “[Every brand and agency] all had their own policy. Basically, there was no way to make decisions about what was safe and suitable.”

The WFA declined to comment beyond the statement it published last week confirming GARM’s closure.

GARM set the risk categories, the floor and provided a forum

GARM was assembled in 2019 in the wake of the Christchurch New Zealand Mosque shootings during which the killer live-streamed the attack on Facebook.

It has since defined what constituted low, medium and high-risk media placement across categories that brands might exercise caution in advertising against, like terrorism, hate speech and profanity. The organization also instituted the concept of a brand safety floor: content so explicit that no brand should advertise against it at all.

“There was value in articulating a floor,” said Arielle Garcia, director of intelligence at industry watchdog Check My Ads. “That was new. There are things advertisers don’t have the appetite to be on and then there’s what shouldn’t be monetized.”

Garcia noted that the definitions of low, medium and high risk could be vague, leading to different interpretations by platforms. Still, GARM’s framework, which built on work first done by the agency trade body the 4A’s and included the input of brands and platforms, gave buyers a common language to negotiate brand safety expectations with social platforms and tech vendors.

“Agencies and brands, in their contracts for example, can refer to certain GARM definitions as a ‘source of truth’, which eliminates confusion and creates significant efficiencies,” said Ruben Schreuers, chief strategy officer at media investment analysis firm Ebiquity.

While other nonprofits like the Media Rating Council (MRC) audit platforms’ brand safety claims, and plenty of brand safety vendors including DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science help redirect brand spend, GARM’s role in creating standards was unique.

As brands reckoned with their roles perpetuating racial inequality during the protests of 2020, GARM was a useful forum, the adtech executive said. Brands could raise questions with platforms and tech vendors about how they could work together to stop the monetization of hate speech, and work together when mishaps happened, the source said.

“No one wanted to sit in front of the GARM steering call and not uphold what they said they were doing,” the source said, noting there were conversations at least bi-weekly at the time. The source noted conversations became less contentious in the last two years, and stopped attending the conversations in 2023.

“There were very productive conversations,” the source added.

Searching for a new and better GARM

Sources agreed that an independent, nonprofit should fulfill the void left by GARM. Schreurs suggested an organization like the International Standards Organization.

Keeping the organization independent is also important to advertisers. Garcia said GARM itself was hobbled by its lack of independence, as it counted brand safety vendors and platforms as members, according to a Web Archive screenshot of the now defunct web page. These organizations could work to make standards more narrow, she said.

Although, Garcia noted many trade organizations accept sponsorship deals from platforms.

“Advertiser standards should be advertiser-led, and advertisers should be aware adtech interests are informing recommendations,” Garcia said. “Either marketer trade associations should not accept funding from vendors, or should disclose this funding so that their members know that skepticism is warranted.”

Creating standards in partnership with publishers and platforms has the potential to neuter industry buying standards, but could also make standards more comprehensive, Schreurs said.

“I tend to agree with the WFA that it was essential to have [platforms] involved,” in creating standards, he said. “But of course, design by committee is difficult and there is an argument to be made that GARM could have been more ‘aggressive.’”