The Google Ads Crisis: How everyone helped Fund Terrorism...

If you have not been following the recent Ad Crisis, then you are missing some excitement!

Google, Brands, and Media Agencies are now entangled in a very complex web that had always been there, but was never in the spotlight before.

The whole incident started with an investigation by The Times that showed Ads for very famous brands appearing on Pro-ISIS websites and other sites for the Klu Klux clan that use Google ads. Someone cried foul, and it was a foul indeed!

Google was accused of funding terrorism and hurting the image of the Brands that advertise with it.

The advertising module of the Google Display Network is set us up in a way that the owner of the site gets a revenue from google ads running on their site; the more traffic the site receives, the more ads will be placed there and therefore seen as well. So basically Google, through the Brand's money channeled mostly through agencies, would be supporting ISIS content and monetizing it on their behalf.

This caused a media frenzy and accusations started flying left and right. 

Brands started stopping their ads for fear of their ads appearing on those extremist websites which causes a huge problem for their image. 

A snowball effect started and brands including Nestle, Marks and Spencer, BBC, Mercedes, and many other international brands announced that they were pulling off their ad budgets from Google Search, GDN, and YouTube.

Agencies, in order to avoid the wrath of the brands, followed suit. Havas announced that it is suspending any bookings on Google until this issue is solved.

The British Government called Google for a hearing to investigate the issue.

Now, the people in the media industry know how Google Ads work, and we know that if a Mercedes ad appears on an extremist website, that it is mostly NOT intended and we ignore the implications and the image of Mercedes is not affected in our minds.

But the general audience may not understand how this system works, which causes a very unfavorable association with brands and the environment their ads are placed on- this is exactly why planning and strategizing are core to media selection for every brand campaign. This is why, understandably, Brands are freaking out at the possibility of harming their image and being linked with any sort of extremism. 

But there indeed is a very serious implication here; if these extremist sites are getting traffic, then it is true that these people are making money that Brands have paid, and indirectly the likes of AT&T, Pepsi and Coca Cola are funding terrorism with the help of Media Agencies !

Google issued many public apologies and promised to provide 3rd party tools to allow reporting and visibility on where ads are appearing. However, with this process being completely automated and advertisers selecting networks to advertise on, it all depends on how Google categorizes those sites. Again, this is all done automatically and we all know that there is always a margin of error in automated algorithms. 

Google shamelessly tried to throw the ball in the agencies court and announced that it does provide agencies with the ability to restrict certain sites from the list of the network, but who could guess all the sites containing extremist content?

Brand safety is currently an issue not just because of the user generated content that might be coming directly from terrorists or their supporters, but the same content could be shared on a white-listed YouTube channel such as a news channel, that would generate hundreds of thousands of views which Google would deem of interesting nature as it is garnering that much traffic and fire up an ad of a brand on the same type of content without necessarily funding terror – the association is still there! People are still seeing Ads served next to content talking about terrorism.

A whole revisit to the structure and the algorithms of the Ad servers, its choice of the network needs to be worked on. While Search Ads are still safe, this is a big blow to Google who now lost millions of potential dollars that could have been spent, and until a solution can be found, this could continue...

On the other hand, can brands handle staying away from advertising on Google's network? Can they risk not being present everywhere their consumers are? 

In an effort to rectify what happened, Google has announced that it has improved its algorithms to detect hate speech and harassment, and they announced that under the new algorithm, the content that Time mentioned would not have appeared. Google has also announced that there is a 24/7 process of manual review of content that has been flagged by the community. According to the search giant, all content is being reviewed within 2 hours of the time it was flagged.

Google also announced that it has added new categories that agencies can use to exclude their ads from showing on content that can be deemed offensive.

With Google now providing better and improved tools and algorithms, it is the agencies' responsibility now to make sure their executives and planners make proper use of those tools. We in the advertising and media industry cannot just blame Google, we need to be careful, and vigilant in protecting the brands that entrusted us with their budgets.

With the ability to select certain sites and networks available, my guess is that the advertising world will continue to operate normally, but they will be more careful.

Google and the Agencies will have to work hard to carefully select their networks, and the winner out of all of this is the Brand who will now get better visibility, better reporting on their ads, better control, and most importantly, ensure better brand safety.