In today's digital marketing landscape, brand safety has become a top priority for marketers working with influencers. With the rise of social media and influencer partnerships, brands must ensure their reputation is protected when collaborating with creators.
In this article:
- What is Brand Safety?
- VN Platform Standard Violation Categories
- Understanding Prompt Versions
- Current Violation Categories
- Enhanced Brand Safety with Custom Keywords
What is Brand Safety?
Brand safety refers to the measures taken to ensure that a brand’s advertising or partnerships don’t appear alongside inappropriate, harmful, or offensive content. This is crucial because associating a brand with controversial content can damage its reputation, alienate customers, and lead to significant business risks.
VN Platform Standard Violation Categories
The platform proactively identifies potential brand safety risks by analyzing creator content across 14 violation categories, flagging associations that could impact brand reputation. These categories are aligned with industry and platform standards for brand safety guidelines.
Understanding Prompt Versions
Viral Nation continuously improves our AI-driven Brand Safety engine to ensure the highest accuracy in risk detection. As we refine our algorithms and safety categories, you may see different “Prompt Versions” (i.e Prompt v1.1.1, v1.2.0), at the post and creator levels. This happens because older posts reflect the version live during their original analysis, while new posts use the current version.
Learn more about previous versions in this help article.
Current Violation Categories (v1.2.0)
| VIOLATION | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| Adult & Explicit Content | Full nudity, explicit sexual acts, or any sexualization involving minors. |
| Alcohol | Display, consumption, promotion, or sale of alcoholic beverages. |
| Animal Cruelty | Violence, abuse, or neglect of real animals (excludes cooking or food preparation). |
| Cannabis | Display, promotion, or sale of marijuana, edibles, or related paraphernalia (bongs, pipes). |
| Gambling | Real-money or crypto gambling, including promotion, facilitation, or affiliate links. |
| Graphic Injury & Gore | Graphic imagery of blood, gore, severe injury, or depictions of death. |
| Hate & Harassment | Hate speech, slurs, discriminatory symbols, bullying, or doxing. |
| Illegal Drugs | Display, promotion, or sale of illegal or controlled substances (excluding cannabis). |
| Political & Sensitive Issues | Political figures, elections, propaganda, or polarizing social/geopolitical topics (including satire). |
| Profanity | Offensive language or gestures. |
| Self-Harm | Promotion or discussion of self-injury, suicide, or disordered eating. |
| Sexually Suggestive | Sexual innuendo, suggestive themes, or sexualized focus without explicit acts (excluding people in swimwear or other clothing without clear suggestive themes). |
| Tobacco & Vaping | Display, promotion, or sale of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or smoking paraphernalia (excluding cannabis). |
| Violence, Weapons & Crime | Non-graphic violence, threats, criminal acts (theft, vandalism), or dangerous stunts. |
Enhanced Brand Safety with Custom Keywords
In addition to standard violation detection, brands can strengthen safety measures further during roster creation by uploading a custom keyword list.
These keywords are used during post analysis to flag content containing specific terms that may be sensitive or misaligned with brand values. Any keyword matches are treated as violations, giving you the ability to take action or exclude posts or creators accordingly.