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POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Posted by: Cecilia Nalagon

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IJRM Call for Papers

Special Issue on

Brand Safety in Digital Environments

Editors:

Stefan Bernritter (King’s College London), Lauren Grewal (Dartmouth College), Vamsi Kanuri (University of Notre Dame), Francesca Sotgiu (VU Amsterdam), and Stefan Wuyts (Penn State University)

Submission Deadline: May 1, 2026.

We are pleased to announce a special issue of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) on Brand Safety. In an era where consumer interactions with brands predominantly originate in digital environments, maintaining reputation, values, and consumer trust presents unprecedented challenges. Today’s interconnected online ecosystems—encompassing digital environments such as social media, programmatic advertising networks, and user-generated content platforms—expose brands to vulnerabilities unimaginable just a decade ago. Ensuring that brand messages don’t appear alongside offensive content is no longer enough; brands must proactively develop an action plan to address potential involuntary implications in controversial narratives or unsafe environments (Merlo, Eisingerich, & Hoyer, 2024). This precarious situation can lead to brand safety crises, harming brand image, equity, and consumer relationships.

Brand safety risks require brands to focus increased efforts to keep their overall reputation safe in digital advertising ecosystems (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2018; Johnson, Voorhees, & Khodakarami, 2023). The scope of brand safety has recently been extended, showing that presence in “unsafe” environments can harm brands financially without damaging their reputation (Bernritter et al., 2025). Additionally, research has begun to consider brand safety risk mitigation efforts according to consumer, brand, and incident level moderators (Grewal, Vana, & Stephen, 2025). Considering that nearly all brands engage with various digital environments, brand safety has shifted from a niche concern to a boardroom priority for marketers, advertisers, and platforms alike. A Google search for “brand safety” yields over 6.63 million results, highlighting the issue’s prevalence. Additionally, an upward trend in searches related to brand safety indicates a growing urgency among key stakeholders to understand, predict, and mitigate potential incidents that threaten brand safety. High-profile incidents of brand ads appearing alongside extremist content, hate speech, and fake news have not only tarnished brand images but also sparked significant advertiser and consumer boycotts, prompting changes in platform policies. The rapidly evolving digital media landscape has intensified these concerns as brands strive to reach consumers in an increasingly fragmented and algorithm-driven environment.

The challenges are multifaceted and will continue to evolve alongside technological advancements. For instance, while programmatic advertising offers efficiency and targeting precision, it can also expose brands to unsafe content across a vast network of websites (e.g., Simonov, Valletti, & Veiga, 2024). The targeting algorithms, designed to maximize engagement, can inadvertently place brands in contexts that conflict with their values. Social media platforms, despite their extensive user bases, often struggle with large-scale content moderation, leading to inconsistencies in how content is evaluated and filtered (Villanova & Matherly, 2024). The rise of influencer marketing adds another layer of complexity, as influencers’ actions and content can directly impact the brands they represent, making it crucial for brands to establish clear guidelines for partnerships (Daniels & Wu, 2024).

Recent technological developments have further complicated brand safety. For example, the advent of deepfake technology, which employs AI to create hyper-realistic manipulated videos, poses novel risks to brand safety (Campbell et al., 2022). Brands could find their content or even executives unwittingly featured in damaging fabricated content, raising profound questions about the importance of authenticity in digital spaces to increase brand safety. Further, as misinformation proliferates, brands may need to remain vigilant to protect their identities from being misrepresented.

Simultaneously, the burgeoning gaming industry, with its immersive environments and large, engaged audiences, presents both opportunities and challenges for brand safety. In-game advertising, e-sports sponsorships, and branded virtual goods offer innovative avenues for exposure, yet the decentralized nature of many gaming communities and the prevalence of user-generated content introduce unique risks. Toxic behaviors among players and the potential for harmful content to go unchecked in these environments can create significant challenges for brand safety (Bernritter et al., 2025).

Artificial intelligence could play a dual role in this landscape. AI-driven tools promise more effective content moderation, real-time monitoring, and predictive analytics to prevent unsafe ad placements. However, the same technologies can also generate or amplify unsafe content at scale, creating an arms race between safety measures and those seeking to exploit vulnerabilities.

While there is a growing consensus that the quickly evolving digital landscape contributes to higher risk in brand safety, the precise definition of brand safety and what is deemed unsafe for brands remains subjective, varying across cultures, demographics, and brand values, making universal solutions elusive. Cultural nuances in gaming content, the global reach of deepfakes, and the algorithmic amplification of polarizing content (Kitchens, Johnson, & Gray, 2020; Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018) are just a few factors contributing to this complexity. Brands must navigate these varying perceptions while crafting their strategies, ensuring alignment with their core values.

In response, a growing ecosystem of brand safety tools, third-party verifiers, and industry standards has emerged. Solutions range from automated content moderation systems to human-led review processes that assess context and sentiment. However, questions remain about their effectiveness, the trade-offs between safety and reach, and their long-term impact on advertising ecosystems. News industry commentators increasingly raise concerns that current brand safety measures— primarily keyword blocklists—have harmful effects on news organizations. By restricting news outlets’ ability to monetize coverage of potentially “unsafe” issues like poverty and human rights abuses, advertisers play a role in undermining free journalism (Newsworks, 2024). The advertising industry’s effort to avoid “unsafe” spaces thus has a direct impact on the news coverage of entire nations and indirectly serves an agenda-setting function. At the same time, current brand safety measures negatively impact the news industry because of their overly broad strategies. For instance, nearly half (45%) of Reach publications’ coverage of the Euro 2024 final was prevented from receiving advertising, as it was mistakenly labelled “not brand safe” due to the presence of words like “shoot” (The Media Leader, 2024). Rigorous academic research is urgently needed to guide practitioners, policymakers, and platforms in navigating these challenges.

This special issue seeks to enhance our understanding of brand safety within the fast-changing landscape of digital marketing. Many relevant studies have addressed brand safety under different terms (see most cited papers in this call for papers) without explicitly connecting them to the concept. By emphasizing the significance of brand safety, this special issue aims to provide a cohesive perspective on the challenges brands face in potentially unsafe environments. We invite contributions from all subareas of marketing that illuminate the nature and consequences of brand safety issues, explore innovative strategies and technologies to address them and examine case studies that highlight best practices. By bridging theory and practice across these emerging domains, we hope to foster a safer, more transparent marketing environment that benefits brands, consumers, and society as a whole.

To guide researchers in exploring the multifaceted nature of brand safety in digital environments, we present the following questions. We would like to emphasize that these questions are only representative, but not exhaustive:

Quantitative Methods or Machine Learning-related Questions:

• How effective are various content moderation tools in reducing the incidence of brand safety crises?
• What are the risks and rewards of using artificial intelligence for content moderation in safeguarding brands? How do AI-driven tools compare to human-led moderation processes?
• How do algorithms used in programmatic advertising or content curation impact brand safety? What are the unintended consequences of algorithm-driven brand placements?
• What brand safety risks are posed by emerging technologies such as blockchain, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and AI-generated content, and how can brands safeguard their image when engaging with these technologies?

Managerial Strategy-related Questions:

• How can brands proactively and reactively mitigate brand safety crises?
• What are the ethical responsibilities of brands in maintaining a safe digital environment? How does this intersect with consumer privacy and data protection concerns?
• How can brands predict what is or isn’t safe for them?
• How can unsafe environments be made brand-safe?
• What are feasible strategies for brands to enter potentially unsafe environments?
• What are the potential benefits of brand safety incidents or presence in unsafe environments for brands and other stakeholders?
• What is the role of brand safety in a B2B context?
• How do brand safety concerns differ in emerging markets compared to more developed economies, and what unique strategies are required to address these differences?
• How do governmental regulations or policies (e.g., data privacy laws, advertising guidelines) influence the strategies brands use to ensure safety in digital environments?

Consumer Culture Theory or Qualitative Research-related Questions:

• What themes emerge in consumer narratives about brands that have faced public scrutiny due to brand safety concerns?
• What are the lived experiences of brands that have successfully recovered from a significant brand safety crisis?
• What role do the upper echelons play in ensuring brand safety?
• To what extent does what constitutes a brand-safe environment depend on cross-cultural factors?
• How do definitions of “unsafe” evolve over time with cultural and technological changes, and how can brands stay ahead of these shifts?

Consumer Behavior-related Questions:

• What is the impact of brand safety incidents on consumer purchasing?
• How does exposure to brand ads in unsafe contexts influence consumer behavior and brand value? How does this vary between different types of brands and different types of consumers?
• How do consumers’ emotional responses to brand safety incidents vary based on the type of content (e.g., hate speech vs. misinformation)?
• How do consumers’ responses to brand safety incidents vary based on where the unsafe content was posted (e.g., does a pre-roll ad on YouTube have the same impact as a post on Facebook)?

Key Events/Dates

1. We will start processing submissions for the special issue on September 1, 2025. The submission deadline is May 1, 2026.

2. We are hosting a two-day paper development workshop at Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, to facilitate the creation of high-quality publications. Here, interested authors can enhance their articles by collaborating with their peers and research experts in marketing and related fields. Please note that attending the paper development workshop is optional for submitting a paper to the special issue, and participation does not assure acceptance in the special issue.
3. Those interested in presenting at the workshop are invited to send an extended abstract of up to 500 words to sotgiu@vu.nl. The abstract should highlight how the project fits within the theme of Brand Safety. Abstracts may also include conceptual frameworks, methodology, findings, and potential contributions, depending on the project’s stage of development. Up to 20 papers will be chosen for presentation at the workshop. If submissions go beyond this limit, papers will be assessed based on the quality of the proposed idea and its relevance to the theme of the special issue.

Deadline for applying to the paper development workshop: September 10, 2025. Paper development workshop: December 4-5, 2025.

More information about the workshop will follow.

���������t IJRM

IJRM is the official journal of the European Marketing Academy and is positioned as the supreme outlet for the most novel and innovative marketing papers.

IJRM is also known for being a very author-friendly outlet. This includes fast turnaround times, a constructive and developmental review approach, and the avoidance of endless rounds of ping-pong between author teams and reviewers. If the authors wholeheartedly invest their deeds before the initial submission and during the review process, we hope to be able to bring good papers out faster than elsewhere. Time-to-market is too often neglected as a key factor in making marketing research relevant.

This special issue will be managed in this spirit.

Submissions

Papers targeting the special issue should be submitted through the IJRM submission system ( and will undergo a similar review process as regularly submitted papers.

Important: When submitting your paper, please select “SI: Brand Safety” as the Article Type. We strongly encourage authors to submit before the deadline. If all authors submit on the same date, the competition for competent and constructive reviewers will be naturally more intense.

All manuscripts must strictly follow the guidelines of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (see ).

The pre-publication PDF of accepted papers will be made available online ASAP.

IJRM Editor Team:

Stefan Bernritter (Guest Editor), King’s College London, UK: stefan.bernritter@kcl.ac.uk Lauren Grewal (Guest Editor), Dartmouth College, US: Lauren.S.Grewal@tuck.dartmouth.edu Vamsi Kanuri (Guest Editor), University of Notre Dame, US: vkanuri@nd.edu

Francesca Sotgiu (Guest Editor), VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands: f.sotgiu@vu.nl Stefan Wuyts (Co-Editor), Penn State University, US: suw282@psu.edu

IJRM Managing Editor:

Cecilia D Nalagon, cnalagon@ijrm.org

References

Bernritter, S. F., Danatzis, I., Möller-Herm, J., & Sotgiu, F. (2025). Navigating toxic playgrounds: Managing reputational and financial brand safety in multiplayer video games. International Journal of Research in Marketing, online first. .

Campbell, C., Plangger, K., Sands, S., & Kietzmann, J. (2022). Preparing for an era of deepfakes and AI-generated ads: A framework for understanding responses to manipulated advertising. Journal of Advertising, 51(1), 22-38. .

Daniels, M. E., & Wu, F. (2024). No Comments (from You): Understanding the interpersonal and professional consequences of disabling social media comments. Journal of Marketing, 88(6), 121-139,
.

Grewal, L., Vana, P., & Stephen, A.T. (2025), Brands in unsafe places: Effects of brand safety incidents on brand outcomes. Working Paper.

Interactive Advertising Bureau (2018), Brand safety in today’s digital context. Retrieved from . Accessed March 17, 2025.

Johnson, R. W., Voorhees, C., & Khodakarami, F. (2023), Is your brand protected?: Assessing brand safety risks in digital campaigns, Journal of Advertising Research, 63 (3), 205-220. .

Kitchens, B., Johnson, S. L., & Gray, P. (2020). Understanding echo chambers and filter bubbles: The impact of social media on diversification and partisan shifts in news consumption. MIS Quarterly, 44(4), 1519-1649.

Merlo, O., Eisingerich, A. B., & Hoyer, W. D. (2024). Immunizing customers against negative brand- related information. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 52(1), 140-163. .

Newsworks (2024). “Check your blocklists”: three industry voices on reconsidering news and brand safety. Retrieved from . Accessed March 17, 2025.

Simonov, A., Valletti, T., & Veiga, A. (2024). Attention spillovers from news to ads: Evidence from an eye-tracking experiment. Journal of Marketing Research, online first. .

The Media Leader (2024). Half of reach’s Euro 2024 coverage wrongly identified by brands as unsafe.

Retrieved from . Accessed March 17, 2025.

Villanova, D., & Matherly, T. (2024). For shame! Socially unacceptable brand mentions on social media motivate consumer disengagement. Journal of Marketing, 88(2), 61-78, .

Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146-1151. .