Money talks.  Most of the advertisers boycotting YouTube are back in the advertising tent, according to Digiday.  MediaRadar said General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Verizon, and Walmart have ads running on YouTube right now.

Major brands pulled their ads from YouTube after worries about brand security and where their ads will be shown.  Google made assurances that they would prevent ads from showing up on hate speech sites and sites promoting terrorism.

Google went on an apology tour and promised changes.

“…there’s a difference between the free expression that lives on YouTube and the content that brands have told us they want to advertise against.” – YouTube Creator Blog

In April, YouTube announced even more controls for advertisers to make sure their ads don’t show up where they don’t want them to.  New filters for objectionable content and “high risk content” have been put in place for advertisers in light of significant advertisers pulling ads from the Google video website.

There is another way to reach your target, though.  Working directly with brand name publishers guarantees your ads will be seen in a quality environment. As good as Google is, ad networks have a built-in problem: they can’t safely police every site that’s in the network. The amount of content that is uploaded daily is staggering and the crooks out there keep moving the ball. Imagine the magnitude of monitoring every item to every site out there… every second… and determining its validity. I don’t know that there is AI capable of that task.