Advertising technology company Centro on Monday will announce an integration with OpenWeb, a community engagement platform.

The partnership is the first of its kind for OpenWeb. It will enable advertisers and agencies to advertise alongside brand-safe user-generated content (UGC) in comments sections of publishers including, AOL.com, FanSided, and PC Magazine.

Conversations occur online in the comments section of a company’s website.

Many offer quality comments. At times they can be used to solve challenges. “We’re trying to create and encourage community, so they interact in a healthy way,” said Dor Herskovich, vice president of revenue at OpenWeb.

Moderation and monetization are required on the open web.

Social media business models encourage engagement — but some platforms like Facebook have not done a good job of moderating comments, which has earned them pushback from advertisers. On the open web, people have many ways to generate content, and some will write anything they want.

OpenWeb removes the steps in programmatic advertising to streamline processes and improve revenue for publishers. Having the ability of placing ads alongside with reader comments is unique, just because brands may be hesitant to be placed next to user-generated content, such as a comment on an article.

The idea is for OpenWeb’s proprietary content moderation technology to alleviate any potential concerns of advertising against UGC, by closely monitoring for keywords, ensuring comments aren’t toxic, spreading hate or violence.

The platform from OpenWeb provides the opportunity to monitor the words in the comments and goes beyond targeting on interests in social behavior to consider the safety of the content and the quality of the discussion.

The platform makes the commenter remove the derogatory content to keep the conversation civil.

Integration with Centro required OpenWeb to modify its platform, Herskovich said. It required OpenWeb to create an open web ad exchange.

There are many supply sources, and typically newer players like OpenWeb cannot integrate with any major DSP, such as Centro. Centro needed to go through that process to determine a good fit.  

Centro formed the partnership for several reasons. Ian Trider, vice president of RTB platform operations, Centro, said Basis, the company’s platform, has an optimized supply path to access Internet users having conversations on publisher environments outside walled-garden platforms.

OpenWeb’s programmatic channel creates scaled ad opportunities with active and attentive people viewing content on principled media companies.