YouTube Hate Videos Haunt Advertisers on Google

EghtesadOnline: Major advertisers across Europe and Asia are still appearing alongside extremist YouTube videos days after technology giant Google said it was taking steps to protect its clients from inadvertently supporting hate.

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25 March 2017

An anti-Semitic clip claiming the existence of a “Jewish World Order” was featured alongside advertisements in Germany from insurer AXA SA, oil company Total SA in France, Range Rover vehicles in South Africa, footwear retailer Skopunkten and website Tradera in Sweden, Bloomberg searches of YouTube from each country found on Thursday. The video was also paired with brands in Asia -- Castrol lubricants in India and Cow & Gate infant formula in Hong Kong.

According to Bloomberg, a separate sermon by preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril, who according to U.S. prosecutors once took credit for a terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia, can be viewed alongside advertisements from Nissan in Sweden and wireless carrier MTN Group in South Africa. Meanwhile, the Islamophobic English Defence League gathers support from advertisers Total, Netflix Inc., IBM and watchmaker Tag Heuer International in France.

The controversy over ad placement, now in its second week, is expanding across the globe at a pace Alphabet Inc.’s Google has struggled to match in its response. On Thursday, as Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt said Google could “get pretty close” to guaranteeing companies’ ads won’t be placed near hateful material, advertisers throughout Europe were confronting more than a dozen new examples and scrambling to protect their brands.

“We didn’t know that our ads were played in this context,” Axa spokeswoman Anja Kroll said in an email. “We have immediately arranged for an update of the filters and stopped the delivery” of ads with these videos because "diversity, tolerance and openness are values that are of key importance for us and that we practice daily.”

Awaiting Answers

While Axa hasn’t pulled its ads from YouTube, the German unit is using "blacklist" filters to prevent its ads from appearing next to extremist, racist or other undesired content, Kroll said. In this case, she said, the filters apparently failed.

“We don’t comment on individual videos but as announced, we’ve begun an extensive review of our advertising policies and have made a public commitment to put in place changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’re also raising the bar for our ads policies to further safeguard our advertisers’ brands.”

Range Rover said in an email it was suspending its YouTube campaign in South Africa while it investigates. Telenor Sweden, which had an ad showing before a propaganda video from a Swedish neo-Nazi group, also halted all YouTube advertising, according to Aron Samuelsson, a spokesman.

Nissan said it was “urgently reviewing” with Google while Nilson Group AB, owner of Skopunkten, said it had asked its media agency about the ads and is “awaiting answers,” according to Linda Fernell, a spokeswoman. Total, IBM, MTN, Tag Heuer, Netflix, Castrol India Ltd. and Cow&Gate owner Danone SA didn’t respond or had no immediate comment. Tradera’s owner, Paypal Holdings Inc., declined to comment.

In Sweden, an Ikea AB spot was found alongside a homophobic and anti-Semitic video entitled: “Gay Pride Parade a Tool of International Jews,” while another clip in India tied the so-called gay agenda to “Satanic Illuminati” and touted the F3 Plus smartphone from China’s Oppo. An ad for HBO’s “The Young Pope” found its way to the pre-roll for “Jewish Hypocrisy -- Flooding Europe With Immigrants” in Spain.

“It is completely unacceptable that IKEA appears in a context like this,” spokeswoman Cecilia Nettelbladt Stenberg said by phone. “What we’ve done now is to ask our media agency to immediately investigate the reason behind this.”

“We don’t control the YouTube ad placement, but we greatly oppose it,” HBO said in an email. “We will be taking steps to get it removed.” Oppo didn’t respond.

Maximum Volume

The advertisers’ discomfort highlights the reliance of Google and Facebook Inc. on automated software that maximizes volume to help them dominate online advertising. Digital advertising grew by 17 percent globally to $178 billion in 2016, according to marketing consultant Magna Global, which projects that digital-based ad sales will overtake TV to become the No. 1 media category this year.

The global array of companies caught up in the controversy illustrates the scale of the problem for Google, which risks potential financial and reputational damage. The company was already facing claims in lawsuit by the family of a terror attack victim that it profits from ads linked to terrorist propaganda promoting violence. The latest crisis erupted after a Times of London investigation last week revealed ads running alongside offensive content. Alphabet’s market value has dropped by about $24 billion this week.

“A cascade of major brand boycotts for Google ad spend (mostly non-search) has emerged, raising concerns on first quarter and second quarter results and the future of programmatic advertising,” Justin Post, an analyst with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a research note on Thursday, referencing the automated software Google uses to match advertisers with content online.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ford Motor Co. suspended their YouTube ads on Thursday. AT&T Inc., Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Verizon Communications Inc. joined the boycott earlier this week, after British Broadcasting Corp., Sainsbury Plc, Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp. said they had pulled ads in the U.K.

The latest examples show the global scope of the Google’s problem, reaching beyond the U.K. and U.S. to big European markets like Germany, France and Sweden, as well as Hong Kong, India and South Africa.

At Skopunkten, a major shoe-store chain in Sweden, spokeswoman Fernell said she was unaware of the “Jewish World Order” video but said the company had noticed some unwanted videos popping up in its YouTube campaigns. “I hope they can help us redirect the ads,” she said. “We need to learn more about this.”

While Google’s tools can be incredibly sophisticated, allowing ads to follow users from site to site, the software hasn’t fully matched the human judgment necessary to protect brands from inadvertently funneling cash to causes their customers would find objectionable. The high number of intermediaries in digital advertising further complicates the problem. So Google’s announced fixes may not completely solve the challenge.

“Google isn’t yet fully addressing advertisers’ concerns and needs to take stronger steps to regain the trust of brands,” Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak wrote in a note to clients Thursday.

Google said Tuesday that it was increasing safeguards to protect advertisers, such as automatically excluding ads from videos deemed “potentially objectionable” and giving advertisers more control over placement. While YouTube revenue isn’t reported separately by Google, analysts estimate the video site brings in billions of dollars each year, and say it’s among Google’s fastest-growing businesses.

Schmidt, in an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings With Maria” on Thursday, said Google can generally ensure clients that their ads won’t be placed next to “hate” content.

“We match the ads and the content,” Schmidt said, according to a transcript from Fox Business. “But because we source the ads from everywhere, every once in a while somebody gets underneath the algorithm and they put in something that doesn’t match.”

He said that Google had tightened its policies and increased the amount of time it spends manually reviewing the content, “and so I think we’re going to be okay.”