Google promises tighter ad control as YouTube creators fight back

Google’s YouTube division was doing its best to play down the controversy surrounding its advertising practices over the weekend, days after a number of large clients pulled their spending from the video platform.

The company - part of Alphabet - was forced to react after both The Times of London and the Wall Street Journal in New York revealed a number of big-brand advertisements were appearing alongside videos promoting racism, hate speech and other controversial content.

But in an interview with Recode on Sunday, Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler said the controversy was being blown out of proportions.

“It has always been a small problem,” Schindler told the technology news service, adding that a minuscule number of advertisements were running alongside videos not deemed “brand-safe”.

“And over the last few weeks, someone has decided to put a bit more of a spotlight on the problem.”

Schindler also worked to assure the internet behemoth wasn’t sitting on its hands, saying it had implemented improved software to automatically recognise five times as many controversial videos as it did before, to keep advertisers away from them.

He also said YouTube was improving the time it took to manually respond to user flagging a video as “inappropriate”, as well as making tweaks to the interface used by advertisers.

Brands using YouTube and other Google products have the ability to target certain demographics very precisely, but cannot control on which videos and websites their brand appears - as that is decided by an algorithm.

Tempers were running hot among YouTube’s content creators since the controversy erupted as well, as many of them rely on Google paying them a share of the advertising revenue their videos attract.

One prominent YouTube channel - h3h3Productions, run by husband-and-wife team Ethan and Hila Klein - was pressured to remove a video accusing the Wall Street Journal of falsifying the evidence it used in its articles.

It was soon pointed out by many of the channel’s own fans that the points used by h3h3Productions to back up their claim of doctored evidence were not watertight.