Advertisers to pay more for ‘brand-safe’ videos on YouTube

Amid further revelations that YouTube is hosting violent and extremist videos, as well as content that is harmful to children, the Google-owned platform is set to charge brands more to advertise on ‘brand-safe’ videos from next year, Business Insider has reported.

According to people in the advertising industry who wished to remain anonymous, YouTube could increase prices by as much as 20% for some of its top US channels.

While YouTube has declined to comment, the news comes as the company announces it will expand its workforce in 2018 in an effort to help moderate content that violates its policies.

It has been almost a year since an investigation by The Times found that major global advertisers had unwittingly been funding extremists by having their ads programmatically placed on what should be blacklisted websites – resulting in hundreds of advertisers pulling their content from YouTube.

Mars, Adidas and Deutsche Bank are just a handful of the latest brands to suspend their YouTube ad campaigns after The Times discovered their content running alongside videos of prepubescent girls in situations that appeal to paedophiles last month.

“In the last year, we took actions to protect our community against violent or extremist content, testing new systems to combat emerging and evolving threats,” YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki, said in a blog post.

“Now, we are applying the lessons we’ve learned from our work fighting violent extremism content over the last year in order to tackle other problematic content.”