Governance Without the Grind

As one of the UK’s largest financial institutions, Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) must ensure paid media activity adheres to internal as well as industry compliance and brand safety standards. With multiple accounts, frequent launches, and evolving Google Ads campaign types, maintaining consistent governance at scale is complex.

Squared.io supports Spark Foundry and LBG by automating compliance checks, enforcing global best practice and protecting brand safety - giving teams confidence that activity remains aligned with internal guidelines while reducing manual workload.

The challenge

Delivering compliant paid media at scale while driving performance presents unique challenges. For Spark Foundry and LBG’s Google Ads activity, this includes:

• Maintaining ad compliance: When ads are refreshed manual checks are needed to prevent the risk of outdated messaging remaining live.
• Ensuring settings meet internal standards: Google Ads defaults, such as Search Partner Network opt in, are not compliant with Lloyds’ guidelines. New campaign launches increase the risk of missed settings.
• Protecting brand safety: Limited placement transparency within Performance Max makes it difficult to understand where ads are appearing – increasing the risk of exposure to low-quality, irrelevant, or potentially harmful content.
• Preventing irrelevant or inappropriate query matching: The expansion of broad match, AI Max and Performance Max increases the likelihood of irrelevant and cross-account queries. Manual negative keyword management makes it time consuming to keep pace.

The solution

Squared.io is implemented to give Spark Foundry and LBG automated, centralised control over compliance and brand safety:

• Ad compliance validation: Squared.io enables the team to import compliance-approved assets to be automatically checked against live ads. Any discrepancies are flagged immediately, ensuring incorrect messaging is addressed quickly.
• Global governance setup: LBG best practice is defined in Squared.io, which is automatically enforced across campaigns – ensuring non-compliant settings are prevented, even as new campaigns launch.
• Enhanced brand safety: Spark Foundry standardise LBG’s brand safety controls globally, while Squared.io’s AI analysis rates placements for risk, with exclusions automatically applied. Contextual analysis also automatically excludes inventory aimed at children, providing additional peace of mind.
• Automated negative management: Squared.io automatically applies negatives, ensuring coverage without manual intervention. Query reporting highlights irrelevant themes and overlap within and across accounts, helping LBG prevent inefficient query matching.

The results

By automating compliance checks and brand safety safeguards, Squared.io helps Spark Foundry and LBG maintain control and consistency – reducing operational risk, improving governance, and freeing teams from manual checks. As automation scaled across accounts, LBG benefited from:

• 1,500 compliant assets checked across ads everyday
• 100% adoption of key LBG compliance and brand safety automation options across accounts
• 21,000+ ad placements automatically excluded due to risk, quality, or contextual relevance, reallocating 80,000 impressions to more suitable placements
• 100,000 negatives managed in platform and automatically applied across campaigns, blocking over 1,000 previously triggered search queries over a 60-day period