Telstra, Bunnings, Nestle continue YouTube boycott

Several big-name brands have continued their multi-million dollar advertising boycott of YouTube.

The advertising boycott of YouTube remains in place.

Big-name brands including Telstra, Bunnings and Nestle have continued their multi-million dollar advertising boycott of ­YouTube as the fallout from the video site’s so-called “adpoc­alypse” continues to damage Google’s image and bottom line.

The Australian has learnt that six weeks on from brands pulling out millions of dollars of ad spend with YouTube, the global boycott has continued.

Telstra, Vodafone, Foxtel, Bunnings and Nestle, among local companies, are refusing to resume their marketing budgets with the video site because of fears Google has not introduced sufficient measures to protect brands from being ­featured alongside misogynistic, hateful and offensive content.

A Telstra spokesman confirmed the telco giant had not recommenced its marketing spend with YouTube, citing dissatisfaction with the company’s measures to provide an adequately brand-safe environment for its ads. Nestle too has continued a global boycott of YouTube. A Nestle spokeswoman said it was still waiting for ­reassurances.

“We remain in active discussions with Google, however it has not yet confirmed to our satisfaction that sufficient measures will be taken to address the issue of brand advertising appearing on inappropriate websites,” she said.

Vodafone Group has recommenced advertising through YouTube, but has banned programmatic media buying with the site and has instead enlisted the services of GroupM to help it manually identify 100 sites it has deemed safe for its brand.

John Montgomery, executive vice-president for brand safety at GroupM, part of WPP, said many global clients are continuing their boycott despite YouTube’s attempts to stem the advertiser ­exodus.

“Some haven’t returned to YouTube and some are reinvesting elsewhere. Most are con­sidering a toe back in the water cautiously via white lists. It’s being done very much on a case by case as was the decision to pause,” Mr Montgomery told The Australian during a visit to ­Sydney last week.

Mr Montgomery said continuing ad feuds hinge on the way digital ad giants like Google and Facebook implement tracking code from third parties.

Google and Facebook both place severe limitations on the implementation of tracking code from third-party measurement companies behind their “walled gardens”.

WPP, the British ad giant, wants more transparency into third-party data collection on Google’s platforms to gain more oversight over the process, Mr Montgomery said. It is common practice in digital campaigns for media buyers to send publishers what are known as tags, lines of code that enable them to track the performance of campaigns.

However, Google, YouTube and Facebook don’t allow ­agencies to use their own tags or to collect their own data on ­campaigns.

“Our clients want to know why Google is not allowing us to solve this problem in the best possible way,” he said. “Right now, they’re not sure that we are doing everything we possibly can because our tags are not allowed in those environments.

“They’re listening to us; a lot of clients pausing advertising has that effect, although I don’t think it will dent their earnings very much. Nevertheless, for them I think it’s a reputational thing as well.”

Asked whether YouTube was doing enough to offer advertisers greater transparency, Mr Montgomery said: “I think they’ve ­responded to this well, but have they done enough? No. what they need to do is allow third-party measurement onto their platform so our clients can feel that everything is being done to make it as safe as we possibly can.”

Analysts have estimated that the advertised backlash against YouTube could cost its parent company Google as much as $US750 million in lost revenue this year.

The YouTube furore erupted in late March after Google’s automated system was found to have placed ads for some of the world’s biggest brands — including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Amazon.com and Microsoft — on videos peddling racist and anti-Semitic content.

Google has attempted to ­cauterise the damage the boycott has wrought by changing the way it places ads.

It has introduced new machine learning systems to enforce a revised code of policies to identify content that may be objectionable to advertisers. The search giant has also trained these systems to classify content to align with advertised preferences.

A Google spokeswoman refused to comment on individual customers but said the company was continuing with an extensive review of its advertising policies and had made a public commitment to put in place changes to give brands more control over where their ads ­appear.

“While we recognise that no system will be 100 per cent perfect, we believe these major steps will further safeguard our ad­vertisers’ brands and we are committed to being vigilant and continuing to improve over time,” she said.

“As part of our commitment to provide even more transparency and visibility to our advertising partners, we’ll be working with trusted vendors to provide third-party brand safety reporting on YouTube.”