This is what happens when you hand your advertising over to algorithms: You add appears next to videos of scantily dressed children. Diageo is one of a number of major brands – including BT, Adidas, Deutsche Bank, eBay, Amazon, Mars and Talktalk – whose ads have appeared near the videos, attracting comments such as this: “I would like to be your stepfather to grope you very well every night mmmm.”
The simple fact is that when an advertiser uses such online platforms, it loses control over where its brand appears.
As for YouTube’s claim that it proactively seeks to prevent such things, one member of Google’s “trusted flagger” program, a group with the task of identifying inappropriate content, told The Times of London that just three unpaid volunteers were responsible for rooting out child-inappropriate content.
“Since August this year, we’ve reported over 12,000 predators to YouTube,” he said. “There is far too much for a few volunteers to handle — there are at least 50,000 active predators [on the site]. YouTube know the scale and their inaction is resulting in the sexual exploitation of more children every day.”
This is not how it used to be, when advertisers or their agencies picked the precise media in which their ads were running. If you wanted to be next to sexy stuff, you advertised in Playboy. If you didn’t, you advertised in such media as Good Housekeeping. Major newspapers would make sure your ad didn’t run next to something you wouldn’t want to be associated with.
Talk is cheap. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc., of course, maintains that “Content that endangers children is abhorrent and unacceptable to us.” But if it really cared, ads would be placed next to videos by people, not algorithms. But that would cut into Google’s profits, which last year totaled $89.73 billion, and whose profits in the third quarter rose 25.1% to $27.96 billion.
Until YouTube fixes this problem – which we don’t think it will – major advertisers such as Diageo and other advertisers should clearly understand that by advertising on YouTube it is supporting not just the child porn industry, but also child trafficking. . . . Our opinion.
Read more here, from The Sunday Times of London.