Posted in: Games, YouTube | Tagged: #YouTubeAgeGate, AT&T, youtube

AT&T Pulls Ads From YouTube Citing "Content Promoting Terrorism And Hate"

Published Wed, 22 Mar 2017 16:45:02 -0500

Continuing our coverage of #YouTubeAgeGate, this time on the advertisement side of things. AT&T announced today that they are pulling advertisements from YouTube. This comes as a wave of advertisers have started boycotting YouTube because their ads are being placed next to hate speech videos, and the company took a step to cutting ad ties until the problem is corrected.

"We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate," AT&T said as part of their statement. "Until Google can ensure this won't happen again, we are removing our ads from Google's non-search platforms."

In a response, a Google rep said "We don't comment on individual customers but as announced, we've begun an extensive review of our advertising policies and have made a public commitment to put in place changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear. We're also raising the bar for our ads policies to further safeguard our advertisers' brands."

For a few weeks now we've been seeing the fallout of YouTube's Age Gate system take effect on content creators as they now rate channels based on content and set an age limit, but now it appears advertisers are still not happy with the way the system is being run and are taking steps to protect themselves. While AT&T may be a couple drops in the bucket compared to the other companies who pay for advertising right now, they're also the most prominent name on the list and it could lead to more people leaving as time goes on. This also means that its money lost for content creators who have perfectly fine content and may have been making decent money off of AT&T's partnership.

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