Real-time video ad technology platform LiveRail is unveiling the "Video Brand Safety Alliance" this morning in partnership with AdSafe Media, Affine, comScore validated Campaign Essentials, DoubleVerify, Proximic and TRUSTe. As Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail's CEO and co-founder explained to me last week, the goal of the alliance is to offer advertisers, agencies, publishers and video ad networks a higher degree of insight and safety for their in-stream video ads.

As the online video ad ecosystem has evolved, advertisers sometimes have come to find their ads running in unexpected places and against undesired content. That's because in order to achieve the reach advertisers seek, the networks, exchanges, syndicators and others they work with distribute campaigns through a complex set of sites which is often not fully transparent. Particularly for high-profile brands that are super-sensitive to where they advertise on TV, online video is like a Wild West.

To address this for its clients, LiveRail has integrated with each of the alliance partners, so that clients can easily choose to opt in to access their services. There are three types of safety options - in-page, in-stream and privacy. The goal is for most publisher sites and content to be pre-screened by the alliance partners. Clients receive comprehensive insight into URLs, semantic page content, and the particular video against which their campaigns ran. While there is a level of alliance partner services that are free, full implementations carry additional charges.

Mark noted that LiveRail isn't collecting commissions on these additional services, but rather is motivated by the desire to provide comprehensive solutions for its clients and move the ecosystem forward. Like many others in the industry, Mark believes that friction (such as safety concerns) act to hold back ad spending from shifting over from TV. While Mark sees some ad networks adopting their own safety solutions, he believes the alliance's differentiator as bringing together a mix of best-of-breed solutions. Other partners will be added shortly.

LiveRail has also published the following video explaining the alliance:

Video Brand Safety Alliance from LiveRail Inc. on Vimeo.