Mantis Venture Capital

UK to Ban Under‑16s from Social Media

The UK Government announced a law to ban under-16s from accessing social media services (named include Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat), with the legislation due to come into force next year. VideoWeek published reactions from five industry experts on June 16, 2026, who discussed implications for child welfare, platform design, advertising, and media strategies. Contributors included leaders from the Conscious Advertising Network, VML, UpTalkTV, Mantis and Channel Factory. The piece cites Ofcom research that 52% of 12–15 year‑olds say they find news on social media trustworthy. Experts frame the ban as likely to shift how brands reach younger audiences (toward gaming, TV/broadcasters, experiential and first‑party channels) and raise questions about platform responsibility, the attention economy, and advertiser measurement and targeting.

Mantis Launches Mantis Video for Publishers

Mantis, a content-safety and contextual intelligence product originally launched by Reach with IBM Watson, has introduced Mantis Video to bring deep contextual and brand-safety analysis to online video. The tool analyses video frame-by-frame, generates AI summaries and applies customisable Red/Amber/Green brand-safety labels and granular contextual categories to help publishers classify, protect and monetise video inventory. Early publisher partners include ESI Media, Immediate Media, LADbible and Nine News. Mantis says the product will help publishers compete for video-first advertiser briefs and is exploring adjacent use cases such as vetting ad creatives, finding optimal ad-break positions and future applications in CTV.

Brand Safety Double Standard: News vs Social Feeds

The article argues that brand safety has become a default setting in digital advertising but is applied unevenly across the media landscape. On the open web, trusted news publishers are often excluded or blocked with aggressive keyword controls, while advertisers tolerate uncertainty in social feeds where tone and context can shift quickly. The imbalance traces back to 2017, when brands’ ads appeared alongside extremist content on YouTube, prompting rapid safety measures that initially targeted social platforms and later extended to the open web. This led to automated keyword blocking that can blunt nuanced journalism and obscure legitimate content. Video adds further complexity, since social platforms rely on limited signals (metadata, captions) that may not reflect on-screen meaning. The piece argues for more precise, sentiment- and context-aware risk assessment enabled by AI to rebalance brand safety without penalizing credible journalism.