The Guardian in the UK has pulled all its advertising from Google and YouTube after they were found positioned next to extremist material, the publisher itself is reporting.
The material is reported to have been American white nationalists, a banned hate preacher and a controversial Islamist preacher.
It appears the ads unfortunate placement was to do with the programmatic trading of its online ads and was done by an agency acting on the media group’s behalf using AdX, Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange Service.
The Guardian’s chief executive, David Pemsel, wrote to Google to say that it was “completely unacceptable” for its advertising to be misused in this way.
Pemsel added The Guardian would be withdrawing its advertising until Google can “provide guarantees that this ad misplacement via Google and YouTube will not happen in the future”.
He urged other brands to blacklist the Google-owned companies until “guarantees that advertising placed on YouTube will not sit next to extremist content in the future”.
This latest issue comes around increasing media reports that advertisers are unwittingly funding online terror groups and hate preachers.
