Cisco Removes Ads From YouTube

Another big advertiser has fled YouTube: Network equipment maker Cisco.

"Google is a significant advertising partner for Cisco, and we advertise across many of their platforms," a Cisco corporate spokesperson told PCMag in a Friday email. "While we invest significantly with Google, we've temporarily paused advertising on YouTube due to instances where third party partners did not meet our brand guidelines."

The company first announced the move in a Thursday blog post, which has since been deleted, according to Reuters. In that post, Cisco reportedly said it does not want its ads to "accidentally end up in the wrong place, such as on a streaming video with sensitive content."

The move follows a recent CNN investigation, which found that ads from more than 300 companies – including Cisco, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Netflix, and others – "ran on YouTube channels promoting white nationalists, Nazis, pedophilia, conspiracy theories, and North Korean propaganda."

YouTube did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment, but a Google spokesperson told Reuters that the company has been working to address the problem.

"We have partnered with advertisers to make significant changes to how we approach monetization on YouTube with stricter policies, better controls, and greater transparency," Google said. "We are committed to continuing this dialogue and getting this right."

This isn't the first time a major advertiser has abandoned YouTube over such concerns. Last March, the British government, along with telecom giants AT&T and Verizon, removed their ads from the platform after discovering that they may have appeared next to content promoting terrorism and hate. Around that time, Google pledged to more closely monitor advertisements that appear alongside YouTube videos, and give brands more control over where their ads appear.

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By November, things didn't seem to be getting any better as revelations surfaced that ads from big-name brands including Adidas, eBay, Amazon, and candy maker Mars were appearing alongside pedophilic and exploitative child content. In response to that scandal, YouTube said: "we've tightened up and strengthened the enforcement of our policies."

And yet, here we are again.