Ikea snared in Google ad scandal

File picture: Google via EPA

File picture: Google via EPA

Published Mar 24, 2017

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London - 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.

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 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.

A separate sermon by preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril, who according

to US 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, 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 and Cow&Gate owner

Danone didn’t respond or had no immediate comment. Tradera’s owner, Paypal

Holdings, declined to comment.

Read also:  Google ad crisis spreads

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 & Company and Ford Motor suspended

their YouTube ads on Thursday. AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline

and Verizon Communications joined the boycott earlier this week, after British

Broadcasting Corporation, Sainsbury, Volkswagen and Toyota Motor said they had

pulled ads in the UK

The latest examples show the global scope of the Google’s

problem, reaching beyond the UK and US 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 funnelling

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.”

BLOOMBERG

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