Alex Jones’ YouTube Channel Running Advertisements Of Brands Without Their Knowledge

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars landed itself in hot water after many major brands pulled their advertisements from the far-right website’s YouTube channel.

After CNN conducted an investigation into InfoWars’ YouTube channel, it found that companies and organizations such as Nike (NKE), Acer, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Network, the Mormon Church, Moen, Expedia (EXPE), Alibaba (BABA), HomeAway, Mozilla, the NRA, Honey, Wix, ClassPass and USA for UNHCR — a group that supports the UN refugee agency UNHCR — ran ads on it.

When CNN reached out to the respective companies for comment on whether they support Jones’ YouTube channel, all the companies, with the exception of Alibaba — who declined to comment — said they were not aware of the fact that their commercials were being shown on the concerned channel.

After being informed of this fact, companies like Nike, Moen, Expedia, Acer, ClassPass, Honey, Alibaba, and OneFamily suspended their ads from Jones’ channel.

A spokesperson for Nike, told CNN the company was "disturbed to learn that we appeared on [The Alex Jones Channel]." Since then, it has reached out to YouTube demanding to know why the channel wasn't flagged by a filter it had enabled.

Traditionally, many major companies buy ad campaigns from YouTube or marketing companies that target certain user demographics. This means that companies do have control over where their ads will be shown.

However, they can choose to use exclusion filters in order to make sure that their commercials do not pop up in unwanted websites or channels on the internet. Some of the exclusion filters include "Sexually Suggestive Content," "Sensational & Shocking,” "Profanity & Rough Language,” "Tragedy and Conflict," and "Sensitive Social Issues.”

Paramount Network spokesperson said it is trying to find out what “went wrong.”

“We have a filter and brand safety assurances from Google our content would never run around offensive content,” the spokesperson added.

Similarly, a spokesperson for Grammarly — an online grammar-checking tool — said: "We take great measures to ensure our ads do not run on videos with sensitive content. We have stringent sensitive subject exclusion filters in place with YouTube that we believed would exclude such channels. We've asked YouTube to ensure this does not happen again."

An Acer spokesperson also voiced concerns that their ads made it to InfoWars’ channel despite its existing filter. The company added that it had set up additional filters to block its ads from appearing on "divisive channels in the future."

A Mozilla spokesperson said the company was deeply disturbed by this news. "We have explicit exclusions set up for our YouTube campaigns and should absolutely not have appeared alongside this content,” the spokesperson said. “We are disappointed to learn that YouTube's filters are not as effective as promised in preventing advertisements running alongside objectionable content. We've since reached out to Google and paused our advertising on the channel."

Companies like Honey — a company that finds the best online deals for shoppers — and USA for UNHCR are working with YouTube to get back the money spent on ads displayed on InfoWars’ channel.

It is not immediately clear if Jones or his channel profited from showcasing the ads.