By Dave Byrne, Global Head of Brand Safety and Industry Relations, TikTok

With billions of videos shared and viewed across TikTok every month, it's our responsibility to ensure that everyone feels safe. With this in mind, we're excited to introduce the launch of our all-new Brand Safety Centre, a resource page designed to showcase our efforts and commitment to becoming the safest, most trusted entertainment platfom for people and brands across Southeast Asia and the rest of the world.

Brand Safety Centre: The grand tour

The Brand Safety Centre will serve as a central hub for all insights, articles, partnerships and other information related to brand safety and transparency at TikTok. The site is divided into six major sections.

1. Our Mission

2. Latest Announcements

3. Partnerships & Certifications

4. Transparency

5. Success Stories

6. Watch & Learn

How we got here: A look back at 2021

The Brand Safety Centre reflects all of our recent developments in the area of brand safety, so I think it's worth looking back at the past year to revisit some of the major milestones that helped make the Brand Safety Centre a reality for TikTok and its advertisers. Everything we do is underpinned by our four brand safety pillars, which guide us in our ongoing efforts to make TikTok the most trusted entertainment platform for brands.

Pillar #1: Keeping our community safe

TikTok’s dedication to community safety includes an array of updated policies, products and initiatives that reflect our ongoing dedication to the safety of the TikTok community. These efforts include: age appropriate privacy and safety settings, tools to promote kindness and combat bullying, curbing the spread of misinformation, and proactive campaigns to promote awareness around online bullying.

Pillar #2: Building brand-safe solutions

We also expanded our offerings to advertisers that help ensure branded content shows up next to safe and suitable user videos. We now offer leading brand safety solutions for advertisers on TikTok: the TikTok Inventory Filter, and a post-bid solution from Zefr for all Southeast Asia markets including Indonesia, Vietnam, Phillippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and pre-bid solutions from OpenSlate in Indonesia.

Pillar #3: Championing transparency & accountability

We strive to be the most transparent and accountable company in the industry with deeper insights into our operations in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. To keep our community informed about the steps we take to keep our community safe, we launched our first two quarterly Community Guidelines Enforcement Reports earlier in 2021 and updates to our community guidelines just this year. These reports bring visibility to the content and accounts removed for violating our Community Guidelines, as well as insights into the volume of fake activity we stopped or removed in our effort to preserve authenticity on TikTok.

We also announced the establishment of a new physical Transparency and Accountability Centre in Ireland, adding to existing centres in Los Angeles and Washington DC, where we continue to host virtual tours. Finally, we revamped the Transparency Centre on the TikTok website to keep our community informed of our efforts in the space.

Pillar #4: Partnering for progress

TikTok has always been a community, so we understand the value of partnerships. Partnerships help inform our own operations and push the industry forward for the greater good of the digital ecosystem. In 2021, we expanded and deepened our partnerships on TikTok, including:

Looking forward: Where we go from here

The launch of the new Brand Safety Centre is just the latest step in our ongoing journey to become the world’s safest platform for brands and their customers.

Over the next year, you can expect to see TikTok:

  • Expand our partnerships and solutions into new markets
  • Work alongside industry groups to set definitions and standards for critical brand safety issues, such as misinformation and ad adjacency.
  • Support TikTok creators and brands working together to tell their stories in authentic and safe ways.
  • Enable small and medium-sized businesses to make informed decisions to keep their brands safe.
  • Adapt and expand our solutions to match new product innovations.

There is no final destination to reach when it comes to brand safety. TikTok will continue to adapt to any changes both online and offline. We will continue to work alongside the industry to tackle complex challenges. We will continue to expand our expertise through partnerships with experts and third parties. This is an exciting time in the development of our platform that brings entertainment, creativity and joy to more than a billion people around the world and we are excited for you to join us on our journey.