Brand safety is dead. Long live brand safety.

Last month, Meta announced that it was ending its fact-checking program and lifting content restrictions on certain topics, all in the name of “discourse.” The company will instead rely on so-called Community Notes, similar to a feature on Elon Musk-owned X.

More controversially, the company updated its hateful conduct policy to allow certain types of transphobic and xenophobic content, according to guidance from the company. As a result, it could only be a matter of time until Meta-owned platforms get more toxic.

Casting aside any political calculus behind the decision, Meta’s policy shift stands to put advertisers in an awkward spot. The industry has spent the last decade preaching the importance of brand safety, despite frequent reports that have raised serious questions about the technology’s effectiveness (not to mention the economic effects it can have on the news business).

In other words, if the world’s second largest ad platform isn’t worried about toxic content, why should the rest of the industry care?

Ahead of any pushback, Meta executives tried to tamp down concerns. At Davos in late January, Meta executive Nicola Mendelsohn said in a roundtable discussion with Business Insider that the company had been speaking to advertisers about brand-safety concerns.

“We know how important it is for businesses to have transparency and control over their brand suitability, and we will continue to invest in this area,” she also wrote on LinkedIn. In the past, Meta has made exceptions to its content moderation policies for its largest advertisers.

Perhaps she could have saved her breath. Three agency execs told Marketing Brew that their clients aren’t yet concerned about Meta’s content moderation changes. In other words, it’s business as usual.

“I believe there’s a general confidence that common sense will prevail, and I’m sure that they will manage this very carefully,” Justin Billingsley, global chief growth officer at the S4 agency Monks, told us. “It’s not top of mind for clients that I’m dealing with.”

“We have not seen large-scale change in the platform, we are still working with them as one of our largest global partners,” Mike Bregman, chief activation officer at Havas Media, told Marketing Brew.

Continue reading here.—RB

Live from New York, it’s not just Saturday Night.

This weekend, brands like AllState, Capital One, Maybelline, and T-Mobile showed up during a Sunday night red carpet show ahead of Saturday Night Live’s three-hour 50-anniversary special at Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center.

Allstate hosted a countdown clock leading up to the event, VW cars drove up to the red carpet, Maybelline hosted a “Last Looks Lounge” as SNL50’s official makeup sponsor, and T-Mobile hosted a red carpet glambot. Capital One was also there, hosting a fan pit.

The programming and brand integrations capped off a season throughout which NBCU strategically wove advertisers into SNL’s milestone year, using some of the sketch comedy series’ most iconic castmembers and sketches old and new to boost revenue and engagement.

“After 50 years, it’s going as strong as ever,” Sari Feinberg, NBCUniversal’s SVP of marketing and brand partnerships, advertising and partnerships, told Marketing Brew. “It's a place that brands have always wanted to be, and this is really the first time that we’ve opened the doors for partnership in such a big way.”

Read more here.—JS

Ariba Jahan is the head of transformation at the marketing agency Anomaly. She joined Marketing Brew this week at our event, Tactical Martech: The Future of AI, Attribution, and Privacy.

We had Ariba tell us a little bit about how she is using AI, and what her thoughts are on the tech’s possibilities.

What’s the best real-life application of AI you’ve seen in marketing? Netflix’s recommendation engine remains the gold standard in predictive AI. Its differentiation of recommendations between my profile, my shared profile with my husband, and my son’s profile shows how AI can be both powerful and personal, balancing familiarity with discovery.

For creative production, tools like Adobe Firefly, OpenAI’s Sora, and Google Veo are reshaping what’s possible. The ability to generate hyper-realistic videos from text or seamlessly fill in missing footage is fundamentally changing our creative approach.

What’s really exciting is that these tools are freeing up creatives from tedious tasks and endless adaptations, letting them focus on what they do best—strategy and big creative thinking. It’s not about replacing creativity—it’s about giving creative talent more space to shine.

Keep reading here.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Hellmann’s teamed up with Roku and Walmart to keep its When Harry Met Sally Super Bowl campaign going with shoppable recipes.
• Icy Hot inked its first college sports deal with Notre Dame Athletics and added an NIL deal with the university’s women’s basketball star Hannah Hidalgo.
• Rhone, the performance apparel brand, signed Boston Celtics guard Jrue Holiday to its roster of athletes.
• TelevisaUnivision partnered with sports streamer Dazn to sell Spanish-language ads in this year’s FIFA Club World Cup.