The New Marketing KPI You’re Probably Ignoring: Brand Safety 

The New Marketing KPI You’re Probably Ignoring: Brand Safety 

Marketers have always been numbers-obsessed — and rightfully so. They track everything from click-through rates to customer lifetime value. They optimize campaigns down to the decimal. They A/B test subject lines, thumbnails, CTAs. It’s all about performance. But what if one of the metrics that’s quietly impacting your marketing outcomes isn’t in your dashboard at all? 

It might be time to start thinking about brand safety not just as a security issue, but as an emerging marketing KPI. 

What Happens to Performance When Trust Is Compromised? 

Let’s say someone searches for your brand on Google. They see an ad, click it, and land on a site that looks just like yours — only it’s not. Maybe it’s collecting fake leads, phishing for credentials, or redirecting to a competitor. Maybe it’s charging users for a service you actually offer for free. 

You never see this traffic in your analytics. But you might see: 

• An unexplained dip in branded conversions 
• A spike in support tickets from confused customers 
• A reputation hit that takes weeks to rebuild 

This isn’t hypothetical. Brand impersonation attacks are becoming more common — especially for companies running paid search or affiliate programs. In 2023 alone, impersonation scams cost consumers over $1.3 billion in the U.S., with fraudsters posing as trusted brands, customer support reps, or tech platforms. Nearly 51% of all browser-based phishing attacks involve brand impersonation, targeting well-known companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Netflix. 

Worryingly, these brand impersonation attacks are also getting harder to detect. A recent study found that 75% of phishing links are hosted on legitimate websites, giving users little reason to question their authenticity. Meanwhile, attackers are creating close to 1 million new phishing sites each month, a 700% increase since 2020. These aren’t isolated incidents — they’re signs of a growing trend. And for marketers, they represent an emerging threat to trust, attribution, and ultimately, performance. 

Why Brand Safety Is Slowly Entering the Marketing Conversation 

Until recently, brand safety lived in the domain of cybersecurity teams or legal departments. Now, it’s starting to creep into the marketing world — and for good reason. 

When bad actors exploit your brand identity in paid ads or cloned websites, it directly affects the very things marketers care about:

• Campaign performance 
• Customer trust 
• Brand perception 

And here’s the catch: the more successful your brand becomes, the more likely it is to be targeted. 

From Gut Feeling to Trackable Metric 

We’re not suggesting that brand safety is suddenly as essential as ROAS — yet. But like bounce rate in the early days of web analytics or mobile-first indexing in SEO, it’s an early signal worth watching. 

Forward-thinking marketers are starting to track: 

• How often their brand is impersonated in ads or domains 
• The time it takes to detect and take down fraudulent pages 
• The share of branded search impressions going to legitimate vs. suspicious results 

How to Start Paying Attention to Brand Safety 

You don’t need a full security team to start caring about this metric. Here are a few ways marketers can take the lead: 

• Google your brand name weekly — especially from incognito mode or different locations 
• Check paid search results for unusual domain names or odd-looking headlines 
• Ask your agency if they monitor impersonation or ad hijacking 
• Explore brand protection tools (like ImpersonAlly) that flag impersonation in real time 

Even just acknowledging that brand safety can impact your funnel is a step ahead of most.

 So the next time you’re reviewing traffic or campaign performance, ask yourself: 

How safe is my brand online?

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