So – just like that – 250 businesses have pulled their ads from YouTube following the revelation they were unwittingly associated with – as well as funding – some extremely dodgy content.
Had any of those brands actually ever used YouTube, or had they only seen the ‘content creator’ ads filled with fresh-faced vloggers?
Did they really think that, with 400 hours of content uploaded every minute, it was deemed an entirely safe place to do marketing? Or did they just assume there was an army of specialists watching the billions of hours of video on there, checking it was all high quality?
Or were those businesses and their agency representatives happily letting algorithms buy audiences across the web, cheap as chips? And do any of those brands think their ads aren’t sitting alongside other dodgy content at this very moment?
The Internet is quite a lot larger than YouTube – and for that fact alone, the blame cannot entirely reside with the video platform or its parent Google. If you shovel your money into a mysterious machine without asking what on earth you’re actually doing, then the fault is really yours.
But at long last, a lesson in quality and context has been (re)learned. Perhaps it’ll save our press. And it’s good to know Google is acting, which should go some way into cleaning up online advertising.
Or perhaps this is all faux outrage – and now that there is a big enough gang, some power can be leveraged back from a business that has gobbled up so much ad revenue it can only make you wince with envy.
Whatever happens next, you can bet if adland isn’t careful it could face government regulation. Every playground needs an adult to remain safe, after all.
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David Pidgeon is the editor of Mediatel Newsline. You can sign up to his team’s weekly blog and news round-up here.
