Advertisers Are Still Boycotting YouTube Over Offensive Videos (go.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:The fallout from the YouTube boycott is likely to be felt through the rest of this year. Skittish advertisers have curtailed their spending until they are convinced Google can prevent their brands from appearing next to extremist clips promoting hate and violence... At one point, about 250 advertisers were boycotting YouTube... The list included big-spending marketers such as PepsiCo, Wal-Mart Stores, Starbucks, AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, and Volkswagen.

It's unclear how many, if any, of those have returned to YouTube since Google promised to hire more human reviewers and upgrade its technology to keep ads away from repugnant videos. Both Verizon and AT&T, two companies that are trying to expand their own digital ad networks to compete with Google, told The Associated Press that they are still boycotting YouTube. FX Networks confirmed that it isn't advertising on YouTube either. Several other boycotting marketers contacted by AP didn't respond.
Thursday CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts that responding to the boycott, Google held "thousands and thousands" of conversations with advertisers, and one analyst now estimates reduced ad spending on YouTube and Google could cost the company $300 million this year alone.

Comments

I didn't notice

[johanw]

Who watches Youtube (and ther rest of the internet) without an adblocker anyway?

Children and bathwaters

[Opportunist]

Advertisers were successfully bullshitted into believing that their brands would be tarnished by appearing next to "offensive" videos. The problem is that YouTube went overboard and now considers everything "offensive" that's not basically cute kittens playing with yarn, not just extremists videos demanding the execution of everything who follows the wrong delusion.

The problem here is that the reason people went from traditional media and to YouTube is exactly that they're fed up with having "family friendly" bullshit shoved down their throats. If that's all that remains on YouTube, people will simply move on.

And then nobody sees your pretty ads either.

Re:Children and bathwaters

[jellomizer]

I think the issue isn't that when people see the add for Pepsi next to a violent extremist video people will relate that Pepsi is endorsing the video. But the act of continued advertising next to the video is endorsing it. What a lot of companies are slowly realizing is that what they spend money on can often have further reaching consequences. Do you want the PR after the next mass shooting that the kids weapons were funded from your company due too add revenue on his hateful YouTube blog?
Or even with the recent Fox News with Bill O'riely, he didn't get fired for what he did but got fired because major companies were pulling out. He get fired, the company that pulled out looks good because it appears they have a conscience the get press for that and it is free advertising.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, YouTube has gone overboard with what they consider offensive. Now, facts are offensive if they hurt the idealistic liberal worldview.

Take a statement like "In the US, Black's have lower IQs than whites." This statement is not at all hate speech. Like it or not, this statement is 100% true. We can debate whether IQ really measures intelligence, oe whether the test is racist or otherwise flawed. We can debate how much of the IQ difference is due to genetics, economic inequalities, or cultural upbringing. But we cannot debate whether blacks or whites in America have a higher IQ, as studies have consistently shown that whites overall perform better on IQ tests than blacks. Censoring facts by calling them "hate speech" is just absolutely unacceptable, but yet it seems to be trendy today, just so we can all live in our safe space utopias and feel good about the world.

Ignorance may be bliss for you, and if so, then don't search for facts about things that may not support your worldview. But stop trying to censor facts and opinions that are contrary to what you wish things to be.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, recent history has clearly demonstrated that americans with the lowest IQ are actually white christian conservative old men and their submissive wives. They are the ones who voted for Trump, are they not ?

No you smarmy-faced idiot. The majority of President Trump's supporters are college and university educated professional working-class people.

Re:Children and bathwaters

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's not it.

"Offensive" is anything that points out the truth in the world, especially if it bursts the bubbles of all the special snowflakes in their safe spaces.

Hate speech = anything critical of anything a person other than a white male does even if race/gender aren't the reason for the criticism and even if the criticism is backed up with facts and evidence.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[MightyMartian]

So we have this measure which is iffy at best, and in most cases hopelessly biased towards certain socioeconomic groups, but hey, it's a great meme "Blacks are dumber than whites, and it's not racist because this groovy Intelligence Quotient test says so!"

In general, psychology and neurological sciences have long past moved away from IQ, simply because it's absurd to imagine that something as complex as human cognition can be fit into one number, considering cognition itself seems to be the product of multiple processing and memory systems in the brain.

So promoting "whites have higher IQs than blacks" *MAY* be true for some kinds of intelligence tests, that kind of testing is so flawed that it's hard to see how proponents of the claim aren't just racists once again using the cloak of pseudoscience to try to bolster their hatred.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[MightyMartian]

Because public schools are run by morons who are still stuck in 1950s in regards to assessing students. As it is, even with standardized IQ tests, the numbers have been rising in many populations, including African-Americans for decades, suggesting that what IQ measures isn't really raw cognitive capacity at all (ie. the Flynn Effect).

One of the biggest reasons for lower cognitive ability isn't genetic at all, but poor nutrition during the developmental years, and that's one of the reasons that socio-economic status has been viewed as a significant player in general and specific cognitive abilities. There's no doubt there's a genetic component, but like anything, genetics sets general parameters, and it is environment that takes over after conception. Considering that many ethno-racial groups in the Americas have not been equal beneficiaries of over all socio-economic improvements, that would strike me as a good reason for why we see phenomena like the Flynn Effect. But that's a rather dull explanation, and not one that allows some Neo-nazi to declare he's superior to African-Americans.

Re: Children and bathwaters

[epyT-R]

That post didn't say these tests were complete indicators of ability. In fact, it said otherwise. The truly 'problematic' thing is the constant drenching of science in political correctness to make it impossible for the public (and possibly many researchers) to tell what's factually correct.

But hey, I get it, it's the age of the alt-right, where saying "Blacks are dumber than whites" is now apparently some sort of unassailable dogma, and where a previous generation's debunked or at least heavily questioned claims are brought back and again asserted to be absolute truth.

Actually, no. The current trend hasn't changed much. It's just that these snowflakes didn't get their way with one specific election, and being the snowflakes they are, they bitch and whine that this is the end of the world.

The reality is that the left still controls the majority of the media and public discussion on these topics. It's nearly impossible to debate them openly, and even when it does happen, it's impossible to point out logical or factual errors in their viewpoints without being labeled as some form of bigot. This is coupled with a real risk of getting kicked out of school/work (there's an example of systemic oppression) by their local socjus fifth column, whether it's the campus 'diversity' office or HR.

Oddly Enough...

[cirby]

YouTube seems to be putting almost no effort into finding ways to limit offensive ads placed over entertaining YouTube videos.

Let's see...

[rmdingler]

There's a show I really want to see. A GoT episode, a Firefly all-nighter, furry porn... doesn't matter.

But. In order to watch the show, I have to let this neighbor family into the house to watch with me who has a track record of stealing stuff from my yard.

Nah. Chances are I can watch the show another way, and if I can't, I'd still rather not pay some unknown, upfront cost for the pleasure.

Not going to work

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

These companies don't understand that YouTube is not, and can never be, like traditional media. If anything, the marketing teams should be fired for a total, epic failure to even remotely understand the nature of the platform they were using.

What I would tell Google to do is a few things to counteract.

1. Allow anyone to monetize, provided their content is accurately self-rated along a ESRB-style rating system (with checkboxes for WHY it is rated that way).
2. Create communities of interest such as "family," one for each major religion, etc. that help advertisers say "we want to coordinate an advertising campaign along all monetizing users by market." So if you're in "family," my wife isn't going to see the trailer for Satan Possesses and Rapes Your Dog 15 between kids videos which seems to happen every Halloween season.
3. Be blunt: if you ain't making us money, your content is going to be lower in search results over content that is.
4. Last, but not least, fire all of the damn SJWs. Easiest way to accomplish this: put out an anonymous workplace survey that says "do you consider hate speech that is not a direct incitement to violence to be protected, free speech." Anyone who disagrees with that probably holds views that are anathema to the long term health of any speech-centered tech platform or product.

Re:Ineffective and wrong.

[Attila Dimedici]

But the people running this protest don't want there to be free speech. They want only speech they approve of to be allowed.