Businesses, including Walmart, Starbucks and Johnson & Johnson, have ceased advertising on YouTube. Google has posted their brands in several videos containing racial extremism. The boycott reached the United States as large businesses show concern over their ability to give terrorism their profits. Many American corporations have joined the U.K. in the fight against YouTube as fears of being labeled racist overwhelm their global markets.
Google versus Wall Street Journal
As the visual cease and desist continues, approximately 400 hours of media Content is posted to YouTube every 60 seconds.
The Wall Street Journal has discovered that Google's automated system has been blatantly placing brand ads to five videos that contained terrorist-related content. The films in question have left global banks and other organizations allegedly affiliated with radicalism, Nazis, Islamic terrorist groups and homophobia.
Originally reported by Sunday Times, the ads were posted by Google at the unwillingness of some of the most prominent global businesses. All of them were initially unaware that any of this was even happening until the report warned of the system's blacklist being defected and that its advertisers were at risk of potentially funding hate groups.
The boycott is currently standing and massively growing.
Companies are quickly joining in an alliance. A total of 250 firms are the start to a valid protest happening in response to the degrading acts resulting from the YouTube ads.
What's happening now
Google has apologized since the incident. Founder Martin Sorrell said in a statement, "We have always said Google, Facebook, and others are the media companies and have the same responsibilities as any other media company." The online advertising mogul has also promised to improve its network.
All brands will not be forced to succumb to their ads being placed in content affiliated with none of their core values.
Partnerships, corporations and enterprises will continue to relieve themselves of any dealings with both Google and YouTube until the media outlets can confirm that this scandal won't ever happen again.
Google's Adwords remains untouched by the matter as it continues to allow brands to market by search query.
AdSense, on the other hand, is under as much scrutiny as YouTube. The company has pledged to put more into their content reviews and plans to develop a program that specifically targets illicit content.
Though it is not a simple issue to fix, Google already has the mindset capable of bringing trust back to millions of people and brands that use and advertise on the platform.
