Ads Still Showing Up On Offensive YouTube Videos, Google Loses $24B In Value

It would seem that Google’s financial nightmare has just begun as the company still hasn’t been able to staunch the bleeding caused by ads appearing on videos containing extremist and offensive ideas. The tech giant already lost the support of some of the biggest companies in Europe before AT&T and Verizon jumped in. Now, it would seem that Google has also lost about $24 billion in market value.

Considering that the majority of Google’s revenue is via advertising, it was only natural that its stocks would take a hit if major brands back out of the deal they made with the tech giant. On Thursday, Bloomberg found that Google still has not been able to address the core issue of ad appearance on offensive content as anti-Semitic clips are still getting ads by big brands.

This is despite the fact that the search engine company had already promised early on that it had already taken steps to remedy the situation. Clearly, whatever measures it implemented was not working and it is shaving away at the tech company’s finances.

The affected companies have had difference responses to the situation, with some pulling their ads out entirely while others are holding off, at least for now. In the case of the German insurance firm AXA SA, for example, the company opted to rely on filters that should have blacklisted certain videos from featuring the ad. The filters failed.

More than emphasizing how easy Google’s finances can be affected by instability in its advertising sector, this incident also highlights how dependent the company has become on automation.  Thanks to complex algorithms that are meant to make the process of cramming ads in as many spaces as possible more efficient, it seems that the company is now having trouble actually fixing the issue that has come up.