Google, YouTube Ad Boycott Problem May Not Be As Big As It Seems

The YouTube ad boycott that started after ads appeared next to extremist content has led more than 250 advertisers to pull their ads from Google. Google apologized for last month and now Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, opened up to Recode about the issue.

“It has always been a small problem,” Schindler said, noting that the only change is that it hasn’t been pointed out, until now. Although, he also said that the company is improving software to track down five times as many videos to keep clear from advertisers. YouTube is working on decreasing response times when a video is flagged as inappropriate.

Read: YouTube Advertising Issues: Google Apologizes For Putting Ads On Offensive Content

While noting that the problem was small to begin with, he tried not to make it seem unimportant but said, “The problem comes from the fact that somebody is aggressively putting it onto the front page.” Essentially he said the only difference between now and the past is that now it’s being talked about, not that it’s happening any more frequently.

Advertisers aren’t happy about this new attention, Schindler said, it’s that attention that’s caused advertisers like AT&T, Nestle and Johnson & Johnson to pull their ads.

But the challenge for Google is in the details. It’s tricky to block certain videos because of only the language or content, certain language can be used in an extreme way in one video, but not in another. So a blanket ban would also result in a loss of potentially safe videos.

Google previously said in a statement that it would be give advertisers more tools to control where their ads appeared and would be changing default settings. Google told Recode it hopes this helps bring some advertisers back to Google.