AT&T pulls out Google ads over offensive content

U.S. healthcare conglomerate Johnson & Johnson became the latest company to suspend all digital advertising on Google’s You Tube, over concerns that its ads may have appeared on channels that broadcast offensive videos. The concerns of the the two largest telecoms in America stem from reports which indicate that Google’s automated systems could be displaying their adverts next to websites or videos containing hate speech or various forms of extremism.

After Mostrous published the article, top European companies completely pulled out of advertising on Google and YouTube.

Besides suspending their spending on YouTube, Wal-Mart, PepsiCo and several other companies have said they will stop buying ads that Google places on more than 2 million other third-party websites.

As AT&T and Verizon’s decision to join the boycott demonstrates, however, advertisers aren’t satisfied yet with Google’s efforts-and that has the potential to hurt the company’s ad revenue. Johnson & Johnson, the world’s biggest health-care company, paused all YouTube advertising globally.

In its own release, Verizon stated “We take careful measure to ensure our brand is not impacted negatively”. It’s also started an investigation, Sanette Chao, a Verizon spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Google’s network business, that caters to displaying ads on other sites, earned a revenue of $4.4bn in the fourth quarter, accounting for almost 20% of the firm’s total ad income. As an increasing number of major advertisers are now in the process of pulling their ads from YouTube and making sure the general public is aware of their decisions, more companies will likely follow suit in the coming days.

Michael Roth, chief executive officer of Interpublic Group, warned that the New York-based advertising company would also pull ads from YouTube if it doesn’t police the platform more thoroughly to avoid awkward situations for advertisers.

In an attempt to resolve the crisis, Google began implementing new tools and policies. But many advertisers were waiting to see further details or results, before placing ads again. They noted that it is hard to predict how the issue would affect Google in the long run. Its statement did include a rare bright spot, however, as it added that it was “encouraged by Google’s steps over the past few days”.

Google did not immediately respond when reached for comment for this story.

With millions of sites in our network and 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, we recognize that we don’t always get it right, in a very small percentage of cases, ads appear against content that violates our monetization policies.