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Exclusive: YouTube ran ads from hundreds of brands on extremist channels

by Paul P. Murphy, Kaya Yurieff and Gianluca Mezzofiore @CNNTech April 20, 2018: 1:09 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/19/technology/youtube-ads-extreme-content-investigation/

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Ads from over 300 companies and organizations -- including tech giants, major retailers, newspapers and government agencies -- ran on YouTube channels promoting white nationalists, Nazis, pedophilia, conspiracy theories and North Korean propaganda, a CNN investigation has found.

Companies such as Adidas (ADDDF), Amazon (AMZN), Cisco (CSCO), Facebook (FB), Hershey (HSY), Hilton (HLT), LinkedIn, Mozilla, Netflix (NFLX), Nordstrom (JWN) and Under Armour (UA) may have unknowingly helped finance some of these channels via the advertisements they paid for on Google-owned YouTube (GOOGL).

US tax dollars may have gone to the channels, too. Ads from five US government agencies, such as the Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control, appeared on the channels.

Many of the companies that responded to CNN said they were unaware their ads had been placed on these channels and were investigating how they ended up there. (Fuller responses from these companies are collected at the bottom of this article.)

One of the companies, Under Armour, is pausing its advertising buy on the platform after CNN notified the company its ads appeared on a white nationalist YouTube channel called "Wife With A Purpose."

"We have strong values-led guidelines in place and are working with YouTube to understand how this could have slipped through the guardrails. We take these matters very seriously and are working to rectify this immediately," a spokesperson for Under Armour said.

Related: Advertisers flee InfoWars founder Alex Jones' YouTube channel

This is not the first time YouTube has put major companies' ads up against controversial or extremist content, despite settings meant to protect advertisers.

The incidents have raised questions about whether YouTube can adequately safeguard ads and brands' integrity, or whether its automated systems mean that advertisers will always be at risk of such ad placements.

After past incidents, some companies temporarily paused ads on YouTube, but then resumed advertising later on.

"YouTube's bottom line hasn't been hit," said Nicole Perrin, a senior analyst at eMarketer who covers advertising and marketing technology. "If brands want to make sure this stops, the only way for that to happen is for them to stop spending [on YouTube] until it's fixed."

Brands continue advertising on YouTube to reach its huge audience, especially younger generations. YouTube says it has over a billion users, and that every day those users watch a billion hours of video.

"We have partnered with our advertisers to make significant changes to how we approach monetization on YouTube with stricter policies, better controls and greater transparency," a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement.

"When we find that ads mistakenly ran against content that doesn't comply with our policies, we immediately remove those ads. We know that even when videos meet our advertiser friendly guidelines, not all videos will be appropriate for all brands. But we are committed to working with our advertisers and getting this right," she added.

However, the YouTube statement does not address why the issue keeps happening.
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http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/19/technology/youtube-ads-extreme-content-investigation/