Boston Herald

SCRUTINY OF DATA USE INTENSIFIE­S

Experts: Backlash to grow

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MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has taken the lion’s share of scrutiny from Congress and the media about data-handling practices that allow savvy marketers and political agents to target specific audiences, but it’s far from alone. YouTube, Google and Twitter also have giant platforms awash in more videos, posts and pages than any set of human eyes could ever check.

Their methods of serving ads against this sea of content may come under the microscope next.

Advertisin­g and privacy experts say a backlash is inevitable against a “Wild West” internet that has escaped scrutiny before. There continues to be a steady barrage of new examples where unsuspecti­ng advertiser­s had their brands associated with extremist content on major platforms.

In the latest discovery, CNN reported that it found more than 300 retail brands, government agencies and technology companies had their ads run on YouTube channels that promoted white nationalis­ts, Nazis, conspiracy theories and North Korean propaganda.

Child advocates have also raised alarms about the ease with which smartphone-equipped children are exposed to inappropri­ate videos and deceptive advertisin­g.

“I absolutely think that Google is next and long overdue,” said Josh Golin, director of the Bostonbase­d Campaign for a Commer- cial-Free Childhood, which asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigat­e Google-owned YouTube’s advertisin­g and data collection practices earlier this month.

YouTube has repeatedly out- lined the ways it attempts to flag and delete hateful, violent, sexually explicit or harmful videos, but its screening efforts have often missed the mark.

It also allows advertiser­s to avoid running ads on sensitive content — like news or politics — that don’t violate YouTube guidelines but don’t fit with a company’s brand. Those methods appear to have failed.

So far, just one major advertiser — Baltimore-based retailer Under Armour — had said it had withdrawn its advertisin­g in the wake of the CNN report, though the lull lasted only a few days last week when it was first notified of the problem. After its shoe commercial turned up on a channel known for espousing white nationalis­t beliefs, Under Armour worked with YouTube to expand

its filters to exclude certain topics and keywords.

On the other hand, Procter & Gamble, which had kept its ads off YouTube since March 2017, said it had come back to the platform but drasticall­y pared back the channels it would advertise on to under 10,000. It has worked on its own, with third parties, and with YouTube to create its restrictiv­e list.

That’s just a fraction of the some 3 million YouTube channels in the U.S. that accept ads, and is even more stringent than YouTube’s “Google Preferred” lineup that focuses on the top most popular 5 percent of videos.

The CNN report was “an illustrati­on of exactly why we needed to go above and beyond just what YouTube’s plans were and why we needed to take more control of where our ads were showing up,”

said P&G spokeswoma­n Tressie Rose.

The big problem, experts say, is that advertiser­s lured by the reach and targeting capability of online platforms can mistakenly expect the same standards for decency on network TV will apply online. In the same way, broadcast TV rules that require transparen­cy about political ad buyers are absent on the web.

“There have always been regulation­s regarding appropriat­e conduct in content,” says Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys Inc., a New York customer research firm. Regulating content on the internet is one area “that has gotten away from everyone.”

Also absent from the internet are many of the rules that govern children’s programmin­g on television sets. TV networks, for instance, are allowed to air commercial breaks but cannot use kids’ characters to advertise products. Such “host-selling” runs rampant on internet services such as YouTube.

Action to remove ads from inappropri­ate content is mostly reactive because of lack of upfront control of what gets uploaded, and it generally takes the mass threat of boycott to get advertiser­s to demand changes, according to BrandSimpl­e consultant Allen Adamson. “The social media backlash is what you’re worried about,” he said.

At the same time, politician­s are having trouble keeping up with the changing landscape, evident by how ill-informed many senators and congresspe­ople appeared during questionin­g of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this month.

“We’re in the early stages of trying to figure out what kind of regulation makes sense here,” said Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University in New York. “It’s going to take quite some time to sort that out.”

‘I absolutely think that Google is next and long overdue.’ — JOSH GOLIN, director, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

 ?? AP PHOTOS ?? FACEBOOK JUST THE BEGINNING: Privacy and advertisin­g experts predict Google, Twitter and YouTube will receive the same scrutiny of its data-handling practices as Facebook.
AP PHOTOS FACEBOOK JUST THE BEGINNING: Privacy and advertisin­g experts predict Google, Twitter and YouTube will receive the same scrutiny of its data-handling practices as Facebook.

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