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YouTube's own ad appears next to unfavourable content

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Global advertisers are now pulling back on their spend in YouTube due to their ads popping up next to unfavourable content. And while one can only assume that the executives over at Google must be working overtime to get a handle on the situation, it seems like now its own ads are popping up next to undesirable content.Most recently, Jack Nicas, a Wall Street Journal writer tweeted out a screen shot of an ad for a YouTube Red original movie appearing as pre-roll on a user-submitted video called “Michelle Obama Dancing to Alabama Ni**er.” The video includes racist slurs.Find the tweet here:Lastly, here: Google advertising a YouTube original movie before a video titled "Michelle Obama dancing to Alabama N-----". Yep. /8 pic.twitter.com/MdoWQ60MwN— Jack Nicas (@jacknicas) March 24, 2017When asked by Adweek to comment on the matter, YouTube declined but noted that it is working addressing the “advertiser concerns”.  Marketing has since reached out to YouTube.Most recently, AT&T and Verizon too decided to temporarily stop buying YouTube ads, as reported by various media outlets. Others to follow suit include Johnson & Johnson, L'oreal, McDonald's, Toyota, HSBC and more.Last week Havas UK took a strong stance and stopped ad spending on Google and YouTube after ads for clients started to appear on “questionable” sites with videos supporting hate speech and terrorism. Affected clients included the likes of Dominos, O2, Royal Mail, BBC, and Hyundai Kia.Meanwhile, Google has promised a wide-ranging overhaul of its advertising policies in response to the the growing boycott of the company’s platforms from leading brands and advertisers. Google said it will pull online ads from controversial content, give brands more control over where their ads appear and will deploy more people to enforce its ad policies.“We deeply apologise. We know advertisers don’t want their ads next to content that doesn’t align with their values,” Philipp Schindler, chief business officer of Google wrote in a blog post. “So, we’re taking a tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content.” 

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