Companies Force Google To Act On Offensive Content By Removing Ads

Several European companies just threatened to pull their money from Google’s advertising service if it didn’t take steps to curb the appearance of ads alongside offensive content. This forced the search engine giant to finally take steps to make sure that videos or articles promoting hatred, violence, and general offensive concepts will no longer feature ads.

Google’s ad content is shown in a variety of settings and media types, including videos, audios, and a ton of websites on the internet. With so many platforms to cater to, Google has had to rely on an algorithm to determine which will feature an ad from the many companies that the tech giant counts as clients. Major brands want this to change, Tech Crunch reports.

It’s only to be expected that global companies don’t want their ads showing up on videos of neo-Nazis promoting anti-Semitism. The same goes for content where religious extremists are recruiting others who will then commit acts of terrorism. Yet, this is exactly what was happening with the ads that Google distributes since it can’t precisely control where such ads would show up.

Last week, Google promised to put more measures in place that will help deal with these issues. It just released more details on what these measures are, with Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler writing a blog post explaining what the company will be doing.

“Recently, we had a number of cases where brands’ ads appeared on content that was not aligned with their values. For this, we deeply apologize,” the post reads. “We know that this is unacceptable to the advertisers and agencies who put their trust in us. That’s why we’ve been conducting an extensive review of our advertising policies and tools, and why we made a public commitment last week to put in place changes that would give brands more control over where their ads appear.”