Amid ongoing concerns about X's new "free speech" approach, and how that's impacted brand safety on the platform (or not), the company announced an expansion of its partnership with Integral Ad Science (IAS), which will provide more assurance for ad partners through improved ad placement control tools, as vetted by third-party analysis.

First of all, X will now provide "premium, vetted inventory," according to IAS, which will ensure safe ad placement, GARM guidelines compliant.
 
The new offering will ensure that ads are not shown next to potentially offending posts inside the app since IAS will confirm this, among other things.

To this, X is launching new sensitivity controls for brands. The platform is allowing advertisers to have control over where their ads appear, according to their own choice criteria.
 brand partners will now have three options available for choosing:
 

Conservative – Brands would like this option so that their promotions do not appear next to the content including potential hate speech, sexualized material, gore, etc.
Standard – This will allow brands to have their content displayed in more spots in the app, while still limiting impressions that stem from the posts themselves
Relaxed – And this is the "free for all" option, which would very likely see your ads displayed adjacent to any content in the app. That is to say, of course, relative to X's existing content rules.
The balance here will be between limiting reach and limiting exposure, with each option restricting or expanding the pool for where your ads can be shown. And once again, the new qualifiers will be supported by IAS, which will provide more assurance in such placement.

X also is testing pre-made blocklists that will provide more help to brands who want their promotions to not appear alongside posts that contain unsafe keywords.

So instead of needing to create blocklists on your own, X and IAS will produce standardized lists to assist, which may serve as an alternative way to avoid negative association.

It's the latest in X's fluctuating new third-party partnerships, which also includes new arrangements with DoubleVerify to offer similar assurance measures.

And again, with much speculation about the rise, or not, of hate speech in the app, many advertisers are indeed wary of X ad placement, which has led to a significant downturn in ad spend at the Elon Musk owned app.

And Elon himself hasn't helped X's case, as he regularly amplifies conspiracy theories and offensive content from his own account, which is the most followed profile in the app, though Musk himself maintains that he will not be curtailing his posting habits, which adds another level of complexity for the app, as it seeks to win back advertiser trust.

Also, its hyperbole is probably not helping:

"On X, people are free to be their true selves, and over the past 9 months, X has delivered a decade's worth of innovation focused on creating an engaging and healthy environment where everyone, including advertisers, can connect safely."

And X CEO Linda Yaccarino joined in on this, boasting that "X has built all its advertiser controls and third-party partnerships in just the last 9 months". Sorry, nope: previous management of Twitter offered similar controls for years before Elon bought the app.

Twitter has used DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science since at least 2020, and also has offered control tools over brand safety options of its own for that same duration. So it cannot be said that all options for brand safety on the platform are brand new and have been developed in the last nine months, and no one seriously thinks that X has delivered "a decade's worth of innovation since last year's Musk coup".

Statements like this, intended to be soothing, only raise more questions over the integrity of platform management and what they claim, which could lessen the value of these upgraded brand safety tools.

But all in all, this is a solid update, which should help X get back in the good books with more brands as Yaccarino looks to win back critical ad spend.