Few marketers doubt that personalization works but it’s still nice to see some proof.  This study by personalization vendor Aki offers proper test vs control comparisons, although they only created a handful of segments and showed the same “personalized” ad to everyone in each segment.  It does show the segment-specific messages beat generic messages and offers some details which groups are most responsive.

Switching back to hard data: Nielsen identified more than 1,200 website URLs containing anti-Asian hate speech and found more than 250 ad campaigns that ran on them, with a spend of $153 million in the first quarter of this year alone.  The list includes a dozen Fortune 500 companies who were effectively funding hate speech but Nielsen pulls its punch by not naming them.

It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying.  IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).  Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.