Google’s AI hasn’t passed its biggest test yet: hunting hate

Cakmak estimates the financial hit to Google from the boycott could be as much as $500 million – a significant sum, but a small amount for a company that posted $26 billion in sales last quarter.

The Australian federal government has reportedly pulled its advertising from Google’s YouTube video platform, joining a list of hundreds of clients worldwide.

Schindler told Bloomberg that since companies including AT&T (T), Coca-Cola (K) and Verizon (VZ) announced they’d be halting advertisements on YouTube, Google has allocated more of its high-level machine learning technologies to ferreting out offensive content on the video website. FX Networks, part of 21st Century Fox Inc., said it was suspending all advertising spending on Google, including search ads and YouTube.

Ah, yes. The “problem” for Google is less the overlap of Good brands and Bad videos, and more the annoying fact that people keep talking about it.

As we reported last month, many advertisers – especially ones based in the United Kingdom – pulled their ads from Google’s platforms citing concerns of associating their brand with questionable content.

GroupM says its new OpenSlate solution will work across reservation media – including Google Preferred, where brands can pay a premium to only appear amongst the most popular content across its platforms, such as music videos and content created by its YouTube stars – and auction-based inventory bought via AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager.

“Of course, when we find that ads mistakenly ran against content that doesn’t comply with our policies, we immediately remove those ads” the statement read.

“We have a set of tools that measure brand safety and quality with video data and deliver it in a way that they can target media accordingly”, Henry said. “You need to use [Sizmek-owned] Peer39.’ It is more to elevate the discussion to say, ‘Hey, you want to use the tools that you can best protect yourself with'”.

Marketers and advertising agencies had been pushing Google for more transparency even before the recent uproar over controversial ad placements.

But such tracking is complicated in that numerous biggest Web advertising platforms are “walled gardens” that restrict the kind of visibility into the back ends of their systems that would allow for more thorough auditing.

Meanwhile, in a separate but related development, marketing and communications giant Omnicom Group has reportedly launched a new service to ensure that YouTube videos are safe for brand advertisements. Omnicom handles the budgets for a number of the world’s largest companies, including Procter & Gamble, Volkswagen and McDonald’s.

Apart from realizing they should give that intern a raise, Chase also saw nearly zero change in overall ad performance.