Startup helps YouTube-wary advertisers

Everyone close to Google’s YouTube has had a rough year as a string of controversies plagued the world’s largest online video site. Everyone but Mike Henry.

Henry runs OpenSlate, a company that screens and grades YouTube videos for marketers. Several advertisers halted spending with YouTube after flare-ups involving inappropriate clips. Marketers are returning now, but they’re still worried their ads may mistakenly endorse an offensive video.

That concern has placed OpenSlate at the center of a booming cottage industry for policing the billions of ad dollars flowing into the giant tech platforms. Starting last year, Alphabet’s Google bowed to advertiser pressure and opened up more of its inner workings to outside monitors. That created a rare opportunity for companies like OpenSlate, DoubleVerify and Oracle’s Moat, which sell software that scans online videos for trouble.

“It seems so obvious but 16 months ago, brands weren’t thinking about where their ads were running,” Henry said in an interview at OpenSlate’s New York headquarters. “So yeah, it’s kept us very busy.”

Formed in 2012, OpenSlate began by providing advertisers with a kind of channel guide for the almost endless stream of videos on YouTube. As YouTube’s content problems mounted, OpenSlate turned its offering into a vetting service. The company’s software scans some 400 million YouTube videos a day, analyzing descriptions, views, likes, comments and shares. It then ranks each clip on a scale, deducting points for risque topics like politics, religion, sex and even twerking.