TOBY SHAPSHAK: Video adverts in the dock
Anger as ads appear next to hate speech on YouTube and Facebook overstates views of video ads by as much as 80%
The only surprising thing about brands pulling YouTube advertising for featuring their content alongside extremism and hate speech is how long it took to happen. Google has been criticised for years about problems with its YouTube advertising — where adverts appear alongside undesirable, sometimes illegal, content, including anti-Semitism or content that advocates violence — that the search engine has often said it can’t solve. First the UK government and later brands such as the BBC, Unilever and high street retailers pulled their advertising. Then the crisis spread to the US, with Walmart, Starbucks, Pepsi, AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson pulling their nonsearch advertising. YouTube may only have accounted for about 8% of Google holding company Alphabet’s US$73.5bn revenue last year, according to research firm eMarketer, but that’s still $5.6bn.Advertisers quite rightly don’t want their brands associated with attacks on minorities or hate speech, but until now Google has appea...
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