Google to Revamp Ad Policies After Big Brands Boycott

Joe Mayes and Jeremy Kahn, reporting for Bloomberg:

The U.S. company said in a blog post Friday it would give clients more control over where their ads appear on both YouTube, the video-sharing service it owns, and the Google Display Network, which posts advertising to third-party websites.

The announcement came after the U.K. government and the Guardian newspaper pulled ads from the video site, stepping up pressure on YouTube to police content on its platform.

France’s Havas SA, the world’s sixth-largest advertising and marketing company, pulled its U.K. clients’ ads from Google and YouTube on Friday after failing to get assurances from Google that the ads wouldn’t appear next to offensive material. Those clients include wireless carrier O2, Royal Mail Plc, government-owned British Broadcasting Corp., Domino’s Pizza and Hyundai Kia, Havas said in a statement.

The flip side of the theory that we, as users, are Google’s product, not their customers, is that advertisers are Google’s actual customers. And so here they are, responding promptly to their customers’ complaints.

★ Monday, 20 March 2017