By Advertising.com Editorial on 
Key takeaways
- Brand safety avoids content no advertiser wants; suitability decides what is right for your brand specifically.
- Sensitivity tiers let you choose how conservative to be for each topic instead of blocking whole categories.
- Overly strict settings shrink reach and raise costs — review thresholds with real delivery data.
Safety vs. suitability
Brand safety is the floor: content that is illegal or universally harmful is excluded for every advertiser. Suitability sits above that floor and depends on your brand — a news story about a storm may be fine for an outdoor retailer but not for a travel insurer.
The difference matters because sensitive subjects aren’t inappropriate in every situation. A financial services brand may want to avoid stories about financial fraud, while a news organization or nonprofit may want to appear next to that very coverage. Suitability controls let advertisers account for those differences.
The aim is to protect the brand while still reaching the target audience. Set your criteria based on your industry, audience, goals and brand standards.
How sensitivity tiers work
- Tier 1 — the most conservative setting; excludes most sensitive or controversial content.
- Tier 2 — a balanced setting that allows factual reporting on sensitive topics.
- Tier 3 — the broadest reach; excludes only content below the safety floor.
Tiers are set per topic, so you can be strict about one subject and open about another.
The cost of blocking too much
Broad keyword blocklists often exclude quality journalism and high-attention content. That reduces scale, pushes up prices and can leave campaigns running on lower-quality inventory.
Keywords alone can’t capture what a page is actually about. A blocklist may filter out an educational piece or news article simply because it mentions a sensitive issue. Reviewing context lets advertisers tell genuinely inappropriate placements apart from relevant pages that happen to cover a difficult topic.
Settings that are too restrictive can cut impressions and make it hard to reach your audience within budget. But wider reach shouldn’t come at the cost of ignoring a brand’s valid concerns.
Suitability is a setting you tune, not a list you write once.
Setting thresholds
- List the topics that are genuinely risky for your brand and choose a tier for each. Use existing brand guidelines, audience expectations and input from stakeholders to set clear boundaries.
- Launch, then review placement reports at the domain and app level. Look for patterns in excluded inventory, delivered placements and reach to understand how your settings affect delivery.
- Loosen or tighten tiers based on what actually ran, not on worst-case assumptions. Make changes gradually and monitor their impact on placement quality and campaign performance.
What to do next
See how suitability signals combine with topic and sentiment targeting to help align advertising with relevant content and brand requirements. Explore Contextual Advertising.
