Brand safety is creating a 'flight to quality' effect among advertisers, who have seen a 12% drop in programmatic advertising this year.

With high CPM ad placements on the rise, especially mobile and native, a recent report by MediaRadar notes that "native is growing with a 74% increase in number of placements in Q1 year over year."

As native advertising increases as a trusted method for brands, the report analyzed ad spending patterns from print, digital and email advertisers across native, video and mobile campaigns and suggests that there is more buying of direct advertising, especially sponsored editorial, while programmatically, there is a ‘flight to quality.’

“For many years, the transition of dollars from direct ad buying to programmatic seemed inevitable, and impossible to roll back. But the near-constant drumbeat of concern over brand safety and fraud in the first six months of 2017 has slowed the tide. There is more buying of direct advertising, especially sponsored editorial, and programmatically, there is a ‘flight to quality.’ Investment is moving actively into private marketplace programmatic,” Todd Krizelman, MediaRadar’s CEO and co-founder, shared with Digital Daily News.

In its Consumer Advertising Report, the intelligence platform tracked the overall ad ecosystem from print to email and native to video throughout all of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017. It appears that small and regional advertisers continue to flourish during a transitional time, and show substantial growth.

The report noted that print ad pages decreased by eight per cent, year over year, but noted there are still a considerable amount of ad pages being bought from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of this year. With niche and enthusiast categories are on the rise, as well as regional titles, the shift towards advertising in niche markets is increasingly clear. In fact, bird watching and cheerleading are among the most improved categories in print.

There is also a clear shift towards higher CPM advertising formats with the greatest percentage increase occurring in native advertising with the demand for native having tripled since January 2015.

When it comes to concerns about brand safety, which represented a 12% drop in programmatic advertising, it appears that this may be why native, email and mobile are up. Krizelman also said in an earlier interview that despite the drop in ad pages and spend in print, the regional and niche markets are showing great growth.