ISBA member removes advertising from YouTube for brand safety reasons.
An ISBA member has removed its advertising from YouTube after one of its brands was shown with a drill rap music video linked to gang violence:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45065986
ISBA and its members have been in discussions with Google on Brand Safety over the past eighteen months and in January this year, Google announced much stricter controls on monetisation.
ISBA were therefore extremely concerned that our member’s advertising ran before such a controversial video.
As the voice of advertisers, we recognise that marketers need to have clarity on the content and advertising policies of a platform and confidence that these are being adhered to, before they can make a decision about whether it is the appropriate advertising channel for their brands.
Google have reassured us that they are working very hard to ensure brands are advertising in a safe context. We know that YouTube advertising is never going to be 100% safe and we want to reiterate that message to advertisers. We would recommend members follow our guidelines to mitigate this risk as much as possible: https://www.isba.org.uk/knowledge/digital/brand-safety/
We continue to hold Google to account on Brand Safety and we are pressing for action on a number of outstanding asks:
- Completion of integration of third-party verification reporting, committed to in April 2017 and currently in beta. Additionally ISBA seeks expansion of the number of vendors to preserve advertiser freedom of choice.
- Integration of third-party, pre-bid Brand Safety tools, not currently agreed.
- More granularity and up to date data in Google’s own ‘Transparency Report’.
ISBA also believes that greater transparency and accountability is needed and that now is the time for an independent, industry-backed oversight body to be established, to set standards and monitor content moderation across all the social media and tech platforms.