Brand Network: core concepts and how brands are classified

A brand network is the set of brands connected to yours through content, inventory, audience, data, and demand, with your brand as the anchor; building one is a matter of identifying which brands belong, classifying each on five axes, and letting the classification set the permissions, economics, and ranking that apply to it. Reading time about 9 minutes.

The six core concepts

A network is therefore a graph: nodes are brands, edges are partnerships, constraints and economics sit on edges, and the Hierarchical Grid (see The Hierarchical Grid: one spine for inventory, layout, and reporting) is the inventory the graph serves into.

Five axes of brand classification

Every brand is tagged on all five axes when it is invited (Network → Partners → Classification). The tags are what BCC reads to propose permissions, splits, floors, and ranking weight, so classifying well is most of the work of building the network.

Axis 1 — What the brand brings (assets)

Most brands bring more than one asset; the tag set is the list, not a single pick.

Axis 2 — Role in your network

Axis 3 — Market relationship to the anchor

Axis 4 — Company type (the audience ladder)

Creators & podcasters, consumer brands, online retailers, consumer services, media & entertainment, media supply aggregators (networks that represent many publishers, apps, or sites and bring their inventory as one supply network), media demand aggregators (DSPs, ad networks, and trading desks that bring many advertisers' budgets), and agencies. The type sets which playbook the brand follows (see Creators and podcasters: launch a podcast network in an afternoon, Companies: turn your website into a media hub, Publishers and media companies: launch a publisher media network, Consumer brands: build a brand commerce media network, Retailers: maximize margin per impression on a retail media network, Developers: add generative video to an existing product in one sprint, and Marketers: run a partner campaign onsite and offsite), which examples it sees, and which of your groups are likely matches.

Axis 5 — Scale and model

Emerging, mid-market, or enterprise, and which network model the brand itself runs (Owned, Extended O&O, Commerce, Retail; Network models in depth: Owned, Extended O&O, Commerce Media, Retail Media). Scale sets the agreement type and service level; model sets which edges are even possible (only a Commerce or Retail brand can be a data brand, for example).

How classification drives the build

1. Permissions. Role and relationship propose the default permission set on the edge; you can widen or narrow it per group or placement (see Brand Partner Invitations and Permissions).
2. Economics. Role plus scale propose the split or price: content partners earn a share on views of their content, demand partners pay package or CPM prices, distribution partners split monetized views, resellers earn a reseller share (see Partner Revenue Splits and Paid Partner Posts and Paid Partner Takeovers).
3. Brand safety. Both profiles must allow a placement; non-endemic and competitive classes carry stricter defaults (see Brand Safety Profile).
4. Ranking weight. Endemic content partners start with the highest weight in category groups, adjacent partners lower, non-endemic content is paid-only; performance then moves the weight (see Personalization and relevance: how Maya ranks every feed).
5. Packaging. Marketplace packages are assembled from the nodes whose classes fit the buyer: an endemic demand brand sees category groups, a non-endemic one sees audience extension and Takeovers (see Marketplace: list packages and transact with demand partners and Package Builder).
6. Reporting. Reports → Network rolls up by every axis, so you can see revenue by role, by relationship, or by company type (see Network Reporting).

Building the network, step by step

1. Identify. List every brand that touches your audience: who advertises in your category, who makes content your audience already watches, who sells what your viewers buy, who holds data on them, and who owns pages they visit. The network directory (see Network Directory Listing) and Octo Ask ("which brands appear most in my groups' content?") both help.
2. Classify. Tag each on the five axes in Network → Partners → Classification. Competitive brands go straight to the exclusion list.
3. Invite with the proposed edge. Accept the defaults BCC proposes from the tags, then adjust groups and placements (see Add brand partners and demand partners).
4. Place and package. Accept content partners into groups (see Accept partner content into your ecosystem), mark groups distributable for distribution partners (see Network distribution: place your content in partner inventory), build packages for demand partners (see Paid Partner Posts and Paid Partner Takeovers), and let Genuin set up destination hosts (see Extended O&O: how managed syndication works end to end).
5. Measure and rebalance. Read Reports → Network by axis monthly; promote partners whose content or spend performs, narrow those that do not, and let Canvas's Partner liaison agent (see Canvas Monetization Fleet) run the routine.

Worked examples

• A running-shoe retailer (anchor: Retail model) classifies a sock brand as endemic, content + catalog + demand, demand partner and content partner, mid-market: Paid Partner Posts in the Running group, product videos accepted, floors from the retail brand safety profile.
• A regional news publisher (anchor: Extended O&O) classifies a national bank as non-endemic, demand, demand partner, enterprise: Takeovers and audience extension only, no content acceptance.
• A podcaster (anchor: Owned) classifies a gear brand as adjacent, catalog + demand, content partner, emerging: affiliate linkouts and an accepted gear group, revenue share on views.

How it runs

What this article describes is built from your brand context and the crawl, shown rendered, and applied on your confirmation; later changes arrive as proposals in the same shape.

Support. Help is available 24/7 from Brand Control Center and from every page of these docs. Ask in plain language; when a person is needed, an account manager, developer, or Ops engineer joins the same thread and stays on it until it is resolved. Every Business Account owner has this on every plan (see 24/7 Octo-enabled support: how Octo brings in account managers, developers, and Ops).

API & SDK

Access: the calls in the table are the proposed Business Account API (see Business Account API: provisioning, OAuth, and the resource map), authenticated with a key scoped to the account and a role or an OAuth client acting for it; every confirmation in this article becomes a proposal you can approve by API (POST /proposals/{proposalId}:approve). Live today, the server API under /api/thirdparty authenticates with a gn-access-token (see Generate an access token), and Live API today and the Business Account API roadmap maps what is live to what is proposed.

// proposed server SDK (Business Account API)
import { Genuin } from '@genuin/sdk';
const genuin = new Genuin({ apiKey: process.env.GENUIN_KEY });
await genuin.partners.list(brandId);
await genuin.partners.invite(brandId, { brand, direction: 'inbound', split: 0.6 });
await genuin.partners.edge.update(partnerId, { … });

Live today: Serve your first ad · Deliver contextual feeds with page, user, and location context · Embed the Genuin Web SDK on your website.

SDKs: Web SDK 2.0.6 (see Embed the Genuin Web SDK on your website), iOS SDK 2.1.5 (see Integrate the Genuin iOS SDK), Android SDK 2.1.5 (see Integrate the Genuin Android SDK), React Native 3.0.3 (see Integrate the Genuin SDK with React Native apps), and Flutter (see Integrate the Genuin SDK with Flutter apps) render Genuin and sign members in; the Node (@genuin/sdk) and Python (genuin) server SDKs are proposed with Business Account API: provisioning, OAuth, and the resource map.