Several brands have put a halt to their YouTube advertising campaigns after understanding that their ads sometimes appear with extremist or inappropriate content. This issue has been experienced by Google Display Network advertisers too. Following this, brands all over the globe demanded Google to prevent it. In reply, Google has publicly agreed that such misplacements are “unacceptable” and thus, is working to resolve the issue as quick as possible.

Google will be introducing new tools, settings, and features to assist advertisement campaign managers to better understand and implement the way their ads and content should appear. Here are the steps announced by Google to stop ads from showing where they shouldn’t be:

New Tools and Settings

Following the advertisements misplacement scenario, the issue of inappropriate content has also been brought to Google’s attention. The tech mogul has announced a number of tools and settings to assist YouTube as well as Google Display Network advertisers. Here is a rundown of all the options made available by Google for now:

Safer Default for Brands

Description

YouTube has started changing the default settings for advertisements as a mean to allow safer default for brands. This will allow ads to show on content successfully meeting a higher level of brand safety whilst excluding potentially objectionable content. Advertising brands on Google and YouTube can opt for advertising on broader types of content.

Implications

• The potentially objectionable content mentioned by Google in the safer default for brands option might put content like opinion content at risk of falling in the category
• Click-baiting video titles might also be cataloged in the potentially objectionable content
• An additional push to the professional YouTube content towards the mainstream
• Concentration of “outsider” advertisement on less trusted content
• Effectual content optimization options for advertisers

Introduction of Account-Level Controls

Description

To make the management of exclusions simpler and more effective, YouTube will soon introduce brand new account-level controls. It will make excluding channels and specific sites easier for advertisers from their Google Display Network and AdWords for Video campaigns. Additionally, advertisers will be able to effectively manage brand safety settings in all their campaigns with the flick of a single button.

Implications

• The notion of excluding distinct sites and channels effectively hold appeal to several advertisers using the YouTube and Google Display Network
• When compared to the great number of monetized YouTube content that an advertisement can be placed alongside, manually excluding one, ten, or even hundred sites or channels is easy

Fine-Tuned Controls

Description

Better fine-tuned controls are on the way. Google is set to introduce new controls that will make it easier for brands to quickly exclude higher risk content and fine-tune advertisements where they need them to be placed on the content.

Implications

• These upcoming measures will assist businesses in avoiding the unfortunate instances of advertisement misplacements
• Advertisement managers will have full control of the content that they should choose for serving ads to the opportune viewers

Amendments in Content & Ads Policy

YouTube has started updating its Content & Ads Policy to remove advertisements from derogatory, hateful, and offensive content. Any content that is prejudiced in terms of race, religion, gender, etc. will not be served with advertisements anymore. In addition to taking another look at community guidelines for filtering monetized content from content that’s inappropriate for monetization, YouTube is also thinking about restricting content from publishing on the video service in the first place.

Other Actions

Google has also announced to “tighten safeguards” so that advertisements can appear only on legitimate YouTube creators in the YouTube Partner Program. Impersonators and community guidelines violators will be treated with strict action, said Google.