Easier ways for brands to manage suitability across Google

With the rise of streaming, content creation is more diverse than ever before and consumers have more choice than ever on what to watch. In a content-rich world, we want to make it easier for advertisers to feel confident in the environments where their brands appear, to reach new consumers and grow their businesses. That's why we're excited to launch a new content suitability center in Google Ads, bringing together everything you need to manage our best-in-class suitability settings, for all campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network.

Evolving with your brand suitability needs

Teams across YouTube and Google spent the past two years working directly with brands to better understand their needs and preferences as it relates to suitability. We consistently found that when advertisers knew how to better navigate suitability controls, they experienced performance benefits — ranging from increased reach and view-through rates to decreased cost-per-view. We’ve used this information to further advance our suitability offering.

Through streamlined controls, the new content suitability center will take out the guesswork for brands in curating the environments that align with their values.

Streamlining how you manage controls

Previously, managing suitability settings was done in multiple, segregated sections of Google Ads and the experience differed across Google platforms. This led to a time-consuming and cumbersome implementation process, along with misconceptions and misuse of the controls. While exclusions can be helpful tools, brands also want to be mindful of the types of content they choose to exclude. Over-exclusion can negatively impact your cost and reach. It can also unintentionally exclude great, brand-safe content or content relevant to diverse communities.

Now, you’ll find all suitability controls under a single point-of-entry, making it faster and easier to set your preferences.

When you enter the suitability center, you may select one of the three inventory modes that’s right for your brand. Inventory modes cater to your preferences for various sensitive themes, such as profanity, sexual suggestiveness and violence.

From there, if you have more nuanced needs, you can fine-tune additional exclusions. For example, a body-positive brand may prefer to exclude diet regimens or weight-loss content, while a luxury brand may prefer not to appear alongside content about sales or bargain hauls.

Once you have designated your preferences at the account level, Google Ads will now automatically apply these settings to your future campaigns. It removes the need to repeat the process for each new campaign. This update is designed to reduce human error when launching campaigns.

Bringing increased efficiency across Google

Our multi-year investments in policies, advertiser guidelines and product features are based on our commitment to protect our viewers, creators and advertisers. When YouTube became the first digital platform to receive content-level brand safety accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC), it was a testament to the investments we’ve made in responsibility, YouTube's top priority.

We have ensured that YouTube advertising meets 99% effectiveness for brand safety across in-stream, livestream, Shorts and Watch Next & Home feed content. ¹ We automatically exclude content not aligned with our requirements from appearing alongside ads. Our progress in brand safety has positioned us to now double down with increased investments in our gold-standard suitability offerings — not just for YouTube, but across Google.

Suitability settings work on top of our brand safety systems to give you more control over the content surrounding your ads — content that, while in compliance with our policies, may not resonate with your unique brand values.

“Giving advertisers and agencies control over where their ads show up has been a tangible goal for all of us in GARM (the Global Alliance for Responsible Media),” says Robert Rakowitz, Initiative Lead, GARM. “These new first-party features really help ad buyers in that they are aligned with industry standards, they bring in more formats across all of Google, and make suitability control management easier to manage across markets and brands. We’re excited to see the broader Google organization introduce these new features which add increased transparency and control.”

The content suitability center is the first of many improvements to come, allowing advertisers to more easily control the environments they want to be in and to reap the benefits of improved campaign performance. We’ll have more to share in the coming months to help you continue to align with what works best for your brand identity and navigate the growing landscape of content.