A few of YouTube's biggest clientele have recently pulled out their ads from the video-sharing website after it was found out that these paid-for clips were shown alongside extremist and offensive contents.
For a few times over, YouTube has made the same mistakes of showing ads of high-profile clients in wrong contents on the platform. This ended up for major brands to withdraw their advertisements from the site.
Marks and Spencer, McDonald's, and L'Oreal are just some of the multi-billion companies who decided to discontinue the showing of their advertisements from YouTube. These corporations are some of YouTube's biggest spenders.
YouTube disclosed to the public that it has refunded the advertisers equivalent to the erroneously aired commercials in line with its advertising policies. According to the Financial Times, the oversight cost YouTube as little as US$3 only, to which one company refused to accept.
In a statement on the matter, Google said: "When someone violates our ads policy repeatedly, we terminate the account, credit our advertisers and do not pay the content creator or publisher."
Marks and Spencer now joined the BBC, the British government, and Channel 4, among a dozen of other organisations, who completely refused to go back to YouTube.
The UK Cabinet Office told the publication: "Government advertising on YouTube remains suspended. Google continues to meet the Cabinet Office regularly to discuss actions that are being taken to address the issue."
This is not the first time the Google-owned website made a similar mistake. In fact, it has been an ongoing issue since time immemorial. Marketing analysts urged Google to hire more people to man the operations on YouTube, particularly on the airing of its advertisements.
In an effort to address such concern, YouTube set a new policy to air advertisements only on video contents of channels with 10,000 cumulative views and above. Google vowed to do its best to avoid similar circumstance again next time.
