How brands like HP make strides on TikTok thanks to its bespoke brand safety solution

Executives discussed how the platform's partnership with OpenSlate helps advertisers during a virtual session at the Brand Safety Summit North America.

Ensuring brand safety remains a priority for TikTok as the video-sharing app becomes a more prominent part of the marketing mix, as with the social media platforms that preceded it to prominence.

In October, the company announced a partnership with digital content ratings provider OpenSlate to offer a third-party verified brand safety solution to advertisers. More than six months into that partnership, brands continue to embrace TikTok, due in part to its brand safety standards. Plus, the partnership is not only helping brands move beyond brand safety, but also informing the creation of ads with the video platform in mind — the "don't make ads, make TikToks" instruction that has become the platform's mantra for advertisers.

One such brand is HP, an early adopter of TikTok that has found success on the platform not just with the Gen Z audience that is most associated with it, but other demographics as well. Executives from HP, TikTok and OpenSlate discussed the platform's bespoke brand safety solution and what it means for advertisers during a virtual session at the Brand Safety Summit North America on Thursday.

Designing a solution with TikTok in mind

For TikTok, designing brand safety tools for advertisers — beyond its own work at content moderation — was a top priority, which is why the company brought on OpenSlate to create a bespoke solution for the platform.

"Working with a third-party verification partner is vital to ensuring to brands that we're able to mitigate risk around content and brand reputation," said Melissa Yang, TikTok's global head of ecosystem partnerships, during the session.

The keys to such brand safety or a contextual product like OpenSlate's solution revolve around determining what's unique about the platform, understanding what ad products are available, and seeing how both parts intersect with the needs of the marketplace, whether direct response advertisers or brand advertisers, OpenSlate CEO Mike Henry explained.

"Our role in the ecosystem is to help promote high-quality content and help connect advertisers and platforms around the sorts of content that are on the platforms and [that] advertisers want to be around," Henry said.

For TikTok, which utilizes a full-screen, vertical video format, brand safety is somewhat different than on other platforms. OpenSlate used GARM's brand safety floor and suitability framework as part of a two-part process that combines technology — bringing TikTok data into OpenSlate's data pipeline — and humans watching content. The solution clears the adjacent videos that play before and after the ad, and reports results — including what videos the ad ran near — in a post-campaign basis.

Brands testing the waters

HP's Senior North America Marketing Manager Anthony Barranco joined the firm in the summer of 2019, around the time TikTok was first growing and attracting interest from brands. Despite its meteoric growth, Barranco noted the early concern around the platform.