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 brand safety lists available in Delivr DSP, how to match them to your campaign objectives, and how they relate to the content categories in the Brand Safety Floor that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) defined before the World Federation of Advertisers discontinued it in August 2024.

Core: The Baseline

Core blocks confirmed malicious domains: fraud operations, phishing sites, malware distribution, ransomware, scam operations, deceptive or abusive sites, and fake shops or subscription traps. 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 list should be the default for every campaign. There is no reason to bid on known-malicious inventory.

This typically covers 800,000+ domains and overlaps the former GARM floor categories for crime and harmful acts.

Extended: Piracy, Crypto Scams and Redirects

Extended contains everything in Core and adds malicious redirects (common malvertising vectors), piracy and torrent sites, crypto scams, and pop-up ad domains.

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 list for enterprise advertisers and brands that want broad protection without restricting adult-adjacent inventory.

NSFW: Adult Content, Drugs and Gambling

NSFW is a separate list covering adult and pornographic content (500K+ domains), drug-related content (26K domains), and gambling sites (2.5K domains). Combine it with Core or Extended.

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.

It covers content that the former GARM floor grouped as adult and explicit sexual content and illegal drugs. It is designed for children's brands, pharmaceutical companies, and CPG advertisers.

Threat Intelligence: Botnets and New Domains

Threat Intelligence is a separate list built for performance campaigns concerned with invalid traffic. It covers botnet command servers, DGA-generated domains (algorithmically generated strings used for malware communication), and newly registered domains (common staging grounds for phishing).

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.

The list aggregates threat intelligence from 200+ upstream security sources, which adds domain-level coverage alongside IP-based detection.

Made-for-Advertising and Full Protection

The Made-for-Advertising list targets 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 is the union of the other five lists, 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 Lists to Campaign Objectives

Direct-response campaigns focused on conversions typically pair well with Core plus Threat Intelligence, blocking fraud without limiting reach. Brand awareness campaigns for enterprise brands should start from Extended.

Children's brands and pharma should add NSFW. Performance marketers concerned about supply quality should add Made-for-Advertising to their chosen base list. Government and maximum-safety requirements call for Full Protection.

The key advantage of separate lists is customization per campaign. A single advertiser can run a performance campaign on Core plus Threat Intelligence and a brand campaign on Extended simultaneously, with each campaign getting the right level of protection for its objective.