Choosing the Right Brand Safety Level for Your Campaign

Not every campaign needs the same level of brand safety. A direct-response performance campaign has different risk tolerance than a Fortune 500 brand awareness campaign. A children's toy advertiser needs stricter content filtering than a B2B SaaS company.

This guide explains the six standard protection tiers available in modern DSP-native brand safety systems, how to match them to your campaign objectives, and how they map to GARM Brand Safety Floor standards.

Standard Protection: The Baseline

Standard protection blocks confirmed malicious domains: fraud operations, phishing sites, malware distribution, ransomware command-and-control infrastructure, scam operations, and abusive domains. These are exclusively harmful domains with zero legitimate ad inventory.

Risk of over-blocking: none. Every domain on this list is a confirmed threat. This tier should be the default for every campaign — there is no reason to bid on known-malicious inventory.

This typically covers 800,000+ domains and addresses GARM categories including Arms & Ammunition (partial), Crime & Harmful Acts, and Online Piracy (partial).

Brand Safe: Enterprise-Grade

Brand Safe adds redirect chains (common malvertising vectors), piracy and torrent sites, and cryptojacking domains to the Standard blocklist. This tier meets GARM Brand Safety Floor compliance.

Risk of over-blocking: very low. The crypto list may include some legitimate crypto news sites, which can be allowlisted per advertiser. Total coverage is typically 940,000+ domains.

This is the recommended tier for enterprise advertisers and Fortune 500 brands that need GARM compliance documentation.

Family Safe: Maximum Content Filtering

Family Safe adds adult and pornographic content (500K+ domains), drug-related content (26K domains), and gambling sites (2.5K domains) to the Brand Safe tier.

Risk of over-blocking: low. Licensed sportsbooks in legal jurisdictions and cannabis businesses in legal states may be caught — both are configurable per-advertiser through allowlists.

This tier covers GARM categories including Adult & Explicit Sexual Content, Illegal Drugs/Tobacco/Vaping, and Crime & Harmful Acts. It is designed for children's brands, pharmaceutical companies, and CPG advertisers.

Fraud Shield: IVT Prevention

Fraud Shield is purpose-built for performance campaigns that need maximum invalid traffic prevention. It adds botnet C2 domains, DGA-generated domains (algorithmically generated strings used for malware communication), and newly registered domains (common staging grounds for phishing) to the Standard blocklist.

DGA domains look like random character strings — they have zero legitimate publisher use. Newly registered domains (under 14 days old) are disproportionately associated with malicious activity.

This tier aggregates threat intelligence from 200+ upstream security sources, providing the deepest IVT coverage available. It catches sophisticated bot traffic that IP-based detection misses entirely.

MFA Filter and Full Protection

The MFA Filter targets made-for-advertising sites — domains created specifically to generate ad revenue with minimal real content. These sites inflate impression counts without delivering real audience value. Coverage typically includes 275,000+ domains.

Full Protection combines all tiers into a single deduplicated blocklist of 4.7M+ domains. This is the maximum-safety option for government campaigns, highly regulated industries, or advertisers with the strictest brand safety requirements.

At 4.7M domains, Full Protection has a higher chance of blocking some legitimate smaller publishers with heavy ad monetization. Advertisers should monitor impression volume after activation and use allowlists to restore any wanted inventory.

Matching Tiers to Campaign Objectives

Direct-response campaigns focused on conversions typically pair well with Standard or Fraud Shield — blocking fraud without limiting reach. Brand awareness campaigns for enterprise brands should use Brand Safe for GARM compliance.

Children's brands and pharma should default to Family Safe. Performance marketers concerned about supply quality should layer MFA Filter with their chosen base tier. Government and maximum-safety requirements call for Full Protection.

The key advantage of tiered protection is customization per campaign. A single advertiser can run a performance campaign on Fraud Shield and a brand campaign on Brand Safe simultaneously, with each campaign getting the right level of protection for its objective.