A new study reveals human content moderators achieve near-perfect accuracy (98% F1 score) in identifying brand-unsafe content like violence or drugs, significantly outperforming leading multimodal AI models. However, this precision comes at a steep premium, costing advertisers nearly 40 times more than the most efficient AI alternatives. The findings highlight a critical trade-off for brands: accept higher costs for nuanced understanding or leverage cheaper AI while risking contextual errors, especially in non-English content.