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FAQ's

What is the primary focus of Filament’s services?
Filament makes advertising on YouTube safe and more effective by replacing low-quality impressions with highly contextual, human-vetted inventory. Our platform makes it easy to launch campaigns that perform better—with fewer steps and more control—while ensuring contextual relevance and brand safety from the start.
Filament employs a thorough process where every YouTube channel is manually reviewed and classified by experts to ensure accuracy, offering a Brand Safe Guarantee. Human review of YouTube channels guarantees that all placements meet strict standards for brand safety and contextual relevance, delivering better results without the risk.
Filament’s contextual targeting leverages real viewer behavior, a detailed taxonomy, and human-verification to create contextual segments. Filament has 500+ off the shelf topics, and can create custom ones by request. Filament provides controls for contextual targeting, like budget and channel-reporting, which help advertisers acieve 3-5x better performance compared to traditional audience targeting alone.
Filament tackles the issue of ad spend waste, noting that 1 in 5 YouTube ad placements are on children’s channels, which can be a brand risk and ineffective for reaching intended audiences. Filament offers free campaign audits to identify and fix such issues.
Filament has 2 technologies to index and categorize YouTube content, constructing networks of channels with shared viewership. They also use Human Verification to build custom contextual targeting networks based on client input, ensuring precise and relevant ad placements.
When you remove impressions that dont have a chance to be effective, and add highly relevant content, campaign performance improves. There are 2 ways Filament drives success for our customers:
  1. Media efficiency: Filament removes 100% of the wasted spend via Safe Lists, allowing that spend to go into higher quality placements and be more effective. This typically represents 20%-60% more effective impressions, which lead to more outcomes.
  2. Media metrics: Filament improves results at every stage of the funnel and for every campaign type. Filament has case studies and proven results for brand awareness, conversion rate, CPA, view rate, and CTR, and more! Campaigns typically perform 3-5x better than the Old Fashion Way of just using Audience Targeting
Filament helps B2B companies by identifying and targeting the Champion and Buying Committee with custom contextual segments to build consensus and drive deals forward, moving away from outdated strategies.
Raditube, Filament’s non-profit arm, focuses on identifying and classifying harmful content like hate speech on YouTube, collaborating with organizations to improve content categorization and combat misinformation.
Filament offers self-service and managed service, with transparent CPM pricing and optional planning support. Filament also offers fully managed campaigns, including fixed-rate and dynamic CPM/CPV pricing. They also provide strategy support and targeting for in-house teams using platforms like DV360.
Filament has supported highly restricted verticals—from religious and financial clients to political and nonprofit causes—navigating YouTube’s ad rules while maintaining top-tier performance. No matter the restrictions, we find clean, contextual inventory that delivers results.
Advertisers must use a credit card to get started. Invoicing is available upon request for ad spends above $15,000 per month
Yes, you need to connect your Google Ads account via API access this allows for easy activation and consistent updates, and reporting
You do not need to use the predictive start but if you have run YouTube in the past we suggest starting with the Predictive start. The predictive start safelist takes a look at the channel you have run on in the past and creates a safe list built off of channels that your campaign has seen success behind in the past and build off those channels.
  • Generally, Google Ads provides more advanced controls, reporting, and automated solutions for easier campaign activation. 
  • DV360 can be a better place to buy YouTube if you have 3rd party data you need to apply, or if you want to use floodlight reporting
  • When working with FIlament, Google Ads is a more seamless activation; curated lists are automatically synced into your account and optimized automatically.

Generally, yes you should use both contextual and audience targeting. Audience targeting is what you’re currently running, and contextual can add a bump in performance. Using both targeting types allows you to use Google’s audience data and cherry-pick relevant places, leading to a balanced campaign.

How much should I spend in contextual?

For most advertisers, start by allocating 15–25% of your YouTube Budget to contextual placements. It’s recommended to launch your campaign and then evaluate after a few weeks. Some brands and topics can spend significantly more budget in contextually relevant places.

What if I have a small budget?

If you’re spending under $3k/month on YouTube advertising, you can consider using only audience targeting with a Safe List. Some advertisers may choose instead to only target relevant content/topics at lower budget levels. Consider what’s been working, and decide your strategy accordingly.

How to choose keywords or topics for contextual advertising?

There are 2 ways to identify relevant contextual places to serve your ads: your gut, and data.

  • Your gut should lead you to obvious places — running training videos for running shoes, gaming content for young men, disease conversation for pharma/health, etc.
  • Data can come from your Google Insights Dashboard, Google Analytics, CRM, or other audience management tools. Data from these places will inform topics that will be highly relevant.

Once you’ve formed an initial list of topics to target, it’s recommended to rank them in order of importance. Campaigns generally start with 3–5 topics, and then can add/remove topics as needed. More than 8–10 topics is probably too broad for contextual targeting.

How do I see where all of my ads are serving on YouTube?

YouTube allows you to see the channels in your campaign, however, you’re required to click on every single channel to see what it’s about. This way is impossible to do quality control on your ads, since campaigns run on 10k+ channels.

You can see where your ads are serving on YouTube with a free historical audit from Filament. Simply connect your Google Ads account (or download your DV360 data), and Filament will analyze all your YouTube placements and give a full reporting of where your ads served.

Contextual

What is Contextual Advertising on YouTube
Contextual advertising on YouTube is when an advertiser places their ad next to content that is relevant to their product or service. Choosing what type of content your ad shows up next to can influence the effectiveness – more relevant means more engagement.
Yes, you can contextually target on YouTube. YouTube contextual targeting is done by using inclusion lists, which means selecting the channels that are contextually relevant to place your ads on. Unfortunately, YouTube doesnt offer tools to make contextual targeting easy, a 3rd party tool like Filament makes contextual targeting on YouTube fast and easy. Just select the topics you want to target, and then assign them to your Google Ads campaign
Contextual targeting is usually a top performing advertising tactic. The theory is that when you show an ad that’s relevant to what a user is watching on YouTube, that user is more likely to remember and engage with your ad. If I’m watching a 5k training video, a running shoe ad is highly relevant.
Contextual advertising places your message alongside relevant content your audience is already engaging with. It improves attention, boosts performance, and avoids the privacy concerns of behavioral targeting—helping advertisers reach people when they’re most receptive.
The purpose of contextual targeting is to align your ads with content that matches your product, message, or audience interests—without relying on personal data. It ensures relevance, enhances brand safety, and delivers better outcomes across awareness, engagement, and conversion.
Contextual fits throughout the funnel. At the top, it builds awareness by aligning with broad interest categories. In the mid-funnel, it captures attention in niche, high-relevance content. And at the bottom, it supports conversion by surrounding signals of need or intent.

Brand Safety

How do advertisers avoid brand safety concerns?
Advertisers avoid brand safety issues by using vetted inclusion lists, exclusion filters, and third-party tools that control where ads appear. Human review, real-time monitoring, and strict content guidelines are key to ensuring ads don’t show up next to harmful, irrelevant, or off-brand content.
Brand safety in streaming TV means ensuring ads only appear within professionally produced, contextually appropriate content. It involves screening for language, genre, and audience fit—protecting the brand’s image while maintaining relevance and avoiding content that may be offensive, low-quality, or off-message.
Branding makes advertising memorable, trusted, and persuasive. It helps create emotional connections, establish market presence, and differentiate from competitors. Strong branding elevates performance across all channels—improving recognition, loyalty, and the long-term value of every campaign impression.
Brand safety in programmatic means making sure automated ad placements don’t appear on content that could damage a brand’s reputation. It involves proactive controls like keyword filters, site categories, verified supply partners, and real-time blocking of unsafe or inappropriate content.
Brand safety is implemented by combining smart tech with human oversight. Use curated inclusion lists, block risky content categories, review performance data regularly, and partner with platforms like Filament to ensure your ads run on safe, relevant, and high-quality inventory.

Inventory Curation

what is inventory curation in advertising
Inventory curation is the process of selecting specific websites, apps, or channels where ads will run. Instead of relying on broad programmatic delivery, curated inventory ensures ads appear only in high-quality, brand-safe, and contextually relevant environments—improving performance and reducing waste. It gives advertisers more control over where their ads appear, leading to better brand alignment, audience targeting, and return on ad spend.
On YouTube, inventory curation means selecting specific channels or videos that align with your brand and audience. With tools like Filament, advertisers can build custom lists to avoid waste, enhance brand safety, and boost performance by focusing only on high-quality placements.
  • YouTube Select is Google’s premium curated inventory offering. It gives advertisers access to top-performing, brand-safe YouTube channels across key content categories—like sports, entertainment, or lifestyle—ensuring high-quality exposure in trusted environments.
  • Filament offers similar premium inventory as YouTube Select; the additional benefits of Filament is human verification of each channel and no kids content guaranteed (YouTube Select includes kids content)
  • YouTube Select provides premium placements, increased brand safety, and better audience alignment. Advertisers benefit from higher engagement, more reliable context, and stronger campaign results—especially for awareness and brand-building efforts.
  • The downsides of YouTube Select are: still includes kids content, no conversion reporting, limited ability to select or avoid certain types of content
Start by identifying the interests or behaviors of your target audience. Use tools like Filament to find channels with high engagement, relevant content, and brand-safe environments. Prioritize quality over quantity and test placements for performance.
In Google Ads or DV360, use placement targeting by entering specific YouTube channel URLs or video links. You can also upload a curated list via Filament, then apply it to your campaign’s targeting settings for precise control.
  • Successful YouTube ads start with clear goals, strong creative, and smart targeting. 
  • Combine audience data with contextual relevance, to maximize reach and engagement. 
  • Use curated inventory to protect brand safety, and continually optimize based on performance metrics like view rate, engagement, and conversions.

Focus on relevance and control. Use curated contextual placements to reduce waste, test ad creative for performance, and prioritize mid-funnel objectives. Tools like Filament help you get more value by ensuring every impression reaches the right viewer in the right environment.