While ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ became one of the biggest entertainment talking points of 2025, contextual brand safety tool Mantis found a large proportion of online stories were flagged as ‘brand unsafe’
It found 64% of Traitors articles published between 8–27 October across the Mantis network were flagged as unsafe for advertising by blunter tools unable to understand particular words’ context.
These included terms such as ‘murder’, ‘victim’ and ‘scary incident’, all essential for reporting on the programme and used differently from other, more literal contexts.
When Mantis’s brand safety, suitability and sentiment targeting tools were used, only 31% of that same content was blocked. This provided nearly double the opportunities for brands to reach highly engaged audiences of premium publishers online.
Mariana Carvalho-Jones, digital development lead at Mantis and Reach, told Advanced Television: “As we so often see with coverage of key cultural moments, the reliance on outdated brand safety blocklist tools is betraying brands by preventing their campaigns from reaching many readers.
“With the next civilian series of ‘The Traitors’ expected to air in early 2026, advertisers should be planning ahead. For a show like ‘The Traitors’, where ‘murder’ is a key theme, advertisers need tools that can identify where this is being used in the context of entertainment, with a positive sentiment.”
Read more on Advanced Television’s website.
