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.”