Brand safety first: Global social media marketing and creator agency Viral Nation detailed updates to Secure, its artificial-intelligence-powered brand reputation solution, including screening creators’ public history.

With ad spend on influencer marketing projected to grow by 60%, to nearly $56.3 billion, by 2029, brands increasingly want assurances that they are investing that ad spend wisely by taking a proactive approach to brand safety and how well creators align.

“We are setting a new standard in brand reputation management by enabling brands to detect potential blind spots and see around corners at the speed of social media,” Viral Nation co-founder and CEO Joe Gagliese said in a statement. “Not only does this ensure greater brand safety, but it also allows for deeper creator intelligence to maximize the opportunity in each creator partnership.”

Viral Nation released Secure in 2022. The solution, powered by Google Gemini, incorporates a brand’s customizable risk setting and vets creators’ entire history on public platforms.

Highlighting the updates announced Wednesday, in addition to text, Secure’s AI-powered analysis covers audio files, images, OCR (optical character recognition) data, transcriptions, and video.

Brands can customize risk tolerance and sensitivity levels and scan for specific safety concerns such as drug use, hate speech, and other sensitive content.

Secure uses advanced AI to help brands find the best match among the pool of creators, classifying content by age rating, style, and topic, as well as detecting past paid ads, sponsorships, and unpaid brand mentions.

Finally, Secure deploys robust logo detection and multilingual analysis, and it can scan 15 years’ worth of content across all major platforms.