Brand Safety Policy

1. Overview

This policy describes the governance process ASTRAD adopts to ensure brand safety for all customers, including all reasonable endeavors to minimize the risk of ad misplacement on mobile devices.
ASTRAD has implemented manual processes using allowlists and blocklists and automated processes using content verification providers such as Integral Ad Science (IAS) and MOAT.
ASTRAD also works with supply-side partners to minimize and block inappropriate advertising inventory.

ASTRAD’s Brand Safety Policy applies to both managed and self-service customers.

2. Brand safety principles

ASTRAD will work to minimize the risk of ad misplacement on all campaigns and adhere to the brand safety specifications agreed upon with customers in each insertion order.

In addition to basic brand safety checks, ASTRAD may respond to news coverage that may impact a brand by excluding additional content using allowlists and blocklists. This will be determined case by case in collaboration with the advertiser.

3. Global denylist

ASTRAD maintains its extensive global denylist of hundreds of thousands of mobile websites and applications flagged as containing inappropriate content. The global denylist is updated regularly based on human processes and using automated technology from third parties to minimize the risk of ads appearing against:

• Adult content, including but not limited to Nudity, Pornography, or Any Explicit Sexual Conduct
• Sexual Assault/Child Abuse Content
• Graphic Violence/Death
• Promotion of Drugs or Illegal Criminal Activity
• Copyright Infringement
• Extremist content/hate speech
• Terrorism
• Illegal downloads/online piracy
• Offensive language/obscenity
• Spam or harmful sites
• Arms/Weapons
• Military conflict
• Tobacco

4. Client allowlists

ASTRAD allows advertisers to curate bespoke allowlists depending on the campaign’s targeting criteria to address brand safety concerns and minimize ad misplacement. Allowlists can be used by lines and campaigns or applied at an agency level to all activities.

5. Supply-side platform management

ASTRAD works closely with its supply-side partners to optimize supply based on demand profiles, minimize brand safety issues, and block unwanted advertising inventory.

ASTRAD implements the following processes with supply-side platforms:

• PMPs created on the supply-side platform
• Denylists implemented at the supply-side platform end
• Specific publishers blocked at the supply-side platform end
  
  

6. Managed service

The ASTRAD Ad Operations Team manages all trading, and inventory is traded programmatically via Open Market Place or Private Market Place.

For Open Market Place trading, campaigns will utilize ASTRAD’s global denylist as standard good practice and any other allowlists, in which case ASTRAD always applies ads.txt and denylists provided by the advertiser and specified in the insertion order.

ASTRAD can also apply IAS prebid or IAS/MOAT post-bid brand safety segments. For PMP trading, campaigns will utilize ads.txt as standard good practice.

ASTRAD may apply prebid or post-bid IAS/MOAT segments for an in-app inventory to ensure delivery is brand safe.

7. Self-service

The ASTRAD Operations team will train self-service customers on the tools and processes available to implement and maintain brand safety good practices.

8. Third-party content verification tools

ASTRAD offers advertisers IAS pre-bidding and IAS and MOAT post-bidding solutions for managed and self-service customers. These technologies, alongside internal human auditing and sourcing information from various other third parties, contribute to continually minimizing the risk of campaigns appearing alongside inappropriate content.

ASTRAD can support the implementation of other third-party verification technologies used by customers. ASTRAD supports Doubleverify tags for blocking purposes.

9. Process and Maintenance

ASTRAD provides advertisers with total programmatic inventory transparency and real-time information. Advertisers can validate where ads are being displayed at any time.

ASTRAD internally vets publishers to ensure that ads do not appear against content that is not brand safe. At a high level, our domain vetting process for campaign briefs includes the following steps:

a) For custom allowlists created to meet the requirements of specific campaign briefs, individual domains are manually vetted by the ASTRAD Ad Operations Team before being added to an allowlist. Only domains with appropriate content, as defined above, are allowed on the list.

b) Once new domains are added to allowlists, these are monitored against Brand Safety metrics (e.g., human traffic and viewable) as part of our weekly Inventory Management routines. Where IAS/MOAT monitoring is enabled, ASTRAD will analyze fraudulent activity, brand safety scores,,, viewability, and other campaign performance metrics that ASTRAD requires to meet KPIs. Domains that do not meet these standards will be removed from campaign lists.

c) The ASTRAD global denylist is updated regularly by the ASTRAD Operations team using human processes, internal algorithms, IAS, MOAT, and other third-party sources. This is implemented at a platform level and automatically applies to all campaigns managed by ASTRAD.

10. Takedown Policy

Suppose a customer deems their ad has been displayed against inappropriate content. In that case, ASTRAD will remove the publisher(s) as soon as notice has been received from the advertiser via email and pause the campaign until the issue has been resolved.

ASTRAD operates a takedown policy to remove delivery across such content within 2 hours of communication during working hours and the next working day during working hours, 08:00 to 18:00 Central European Time.

ASTRAD will endeavor to thoroughly investigate the ad violation and take any necessary steps to prevent this from happening again.

The ASTRAD operations team will manually audit publishers utilizing brand safety tools and data across our exchange partners. If they are found to be unsuitable, they will be excluded.

ASTRAD self-service advertisers can log into the platform, add publisher(s) to a denylist, and pause the campaign if required. Self-service customers may contact ASTRAD to investigate the matter further.

Where an advertiser has agreed to the ASTRAD IO or MSA: The contractual consequences of not taking down an ad by the ASTRAD takedown policy are to be decided between ASTRAD and the advertiser on a case-by-case basis.

11. Anti-Fraud policy

ASTRAD takes the following steps to minimize the risk of ad fraud:

Our Operations team uses content verification tools like IAS or MOAT to monitor suspicious activity by domain. All publishers with suspicious activity above a threshold are removed from campaigns. By working with only prevetted inventory and trusted inventory sellers, ASTRAD lowers the risk of ad fraud.

ASTRAD supports ads.txt to protect brands against ads appearing on fraudulent mobile websites and will look to adopt app-ads.txt in the future.

Finally, ASTRAD is integrated with Udger in order to detect fraudulent IPs.