YouTube Advertising Horror

One of my earliest blogs when I first started a couple of years ago was a YouTube blog about advertisers pulling away because their ads being on really hateful material. Let's just say the video sharing site is still pulling off a lot of favors to please advertisers. As I said in that one, I use AdBlock and avoid annoying ads for crap like Liberty Mutual, though they have gotten smarter with not shoving 30 second ones down your throat.

What is happening again? YouTube is going after predatory stuff and going after Momo videos. So what is it? It's a hoax and a challenge for kids. They are to do dangerous things, and that can include committing suicide. That kind of stuff does not fly with the site and they are trying to get rid of any content that might relate to that. That's not the only thing they are going after. Also in the hunt is removing millions upon millions of comments on videos involving minors because of predatory stuff. Regardless of the content being good or bad, add in the numerous channels that may have been deleted and a few other things, it shows something that is both good and bad. 

On the one hand, it is good to try and protect kids. After all, this is probably the biggest video sharing site on the planet. I wouldn't be surprised if there is people who hunger for them and act all sexual. That should be an obvious warning sign. Not sure about little kids, but definitely it's teenagers. You can't blame YouTube for doing this. In the last few years since Trump became president, there has been a focus to get rid of inappropriate content and comments of that nature. It's noble.

However, this is a full nuclear panic as no one can comment. Not even content creators. Why not let the content creators review the stuff? This is a case of bending down to major advertisers like soda companies major retail stores. As I said, it's a good thing, but it is a bit of an overreaction in disabling it for everybody. Unfortunately, it's the case of a number of people ruining it for everybody. As probably per usual, Google won't explain anything and if they do, it will be an automated robotic response.

YouTube Boycott: Advertisers Hating Hatred

I don't use monetization on YouTube. I use AdBlock on my laptop to avoid the same five to ten advertisers. When I did have to use a computer outside of my home, it's bombarded with phone ads, car insurance, and other stuff like McDonalds and Burger King. Recently, advertisers are pulling themselves out of YouTube advertising because of some of their stuff being on videos that shouldn't exist.

The list is staggering how many have decided to leave. Some big companies like Wal-Mart and Pepsi have made the decision to pull out. YouTube exploded on the scene in 2006 and has been a huge thing for advertising. How do they not know about all the content being made, even back to when the site first started in 2005? Way before I used AdBlock, I typically saw the same ads over and over. It was for stuff like T-Mobile with the red dress girl and whatever movies were hitting theaters at the time. And this was on videos for video games like Doom for example. On one of the college campuses, I watched some older NFL stuff and I kept getting the same Burger King ad for french fries. You can put AdBlock on there, but on vacations, they reset those computers.

Here's a hypothetical situation on what I think advertisers don't want to see. Let's say I want to talk about seeing Tom Brady and the New England Patriots organization die in a plane crash in a video. It's gets a couple hundred thousand views. Maybe I might want ads on it. That's what they don't want to see in this hypothetical. They don't want their stuff on videos that have hatred in them or sensitive material like domestic violence or rape. It doesn't make sense considering all the crime shows that depict violence like NCIS, The Blacklist, and so forth getting ads for car commercials and other things. Even for stuff on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. It doesn't add up.

I'm not sure if Google really has a choice. Their responses are very poor and robotic when it comes to certain things. They don't really listen to others. With the advertisers pulling away, this might be the one time they actually will do something. It's a long road ahead. Several articles on this matter have said per minute that 400 hours of content get uploaded. Millions upon millions put up all sorts of videos. It's up to Google to look at all the videos and judge them on their content. They need a large chunk of people to look at them and satisfy the advertisers. Otherwise, it's going to be next to impossible. Whether users go somewhere else is a problem. If some of them can't monetize, they might try a different site (if it's as big as Google) and upload their stuff there. Certain users have left YouTube and come back to it following a certain amount of time on another video sharing site.

Google has to handle this very delicately towards the video creators and advertisers. They can't rush this. If they do, it's going to piss off quite a bit of people who aren't in the top 1000 for video views and creations. Let's hope they find a way to fix this. I really doubt they will.