Tech giant Google has placed hundreds of brand adverts on questionable and blacklisted websites, including those which host pornographic, zoophilic and pirated content.
The allegations come from digital ads analysis group Adalytics, which shared screenshots from a range of different paid-for adverts, showing them being run across a number of compromising websites, including major global brands like Meta, Apple and Amazon.
As well as pornographic sites, adverts featured on websites listed on a US Treasury blacklist. One of Google’s adverts for the FBI featured on iasco.ir, the site of the Iranian Alloy Steel Company, which is currently under sanctions.
Companies including BMW and Uber technologies, which had specifically requested that their adverts did not appear on far right site Breitbart, found their adverts had been running on it as recently as November 2023.
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In addition to big retail and tech brand names, adverts for reputable publishers including the The Guardian, the Financial Times (FT) and Washington Post also appeared on such sites.
Some chocolate, soda and alcohol brands, such as Smirnoff, also had their adverts displayed on websites meant for children.
A global head of media at a Fortune 500 company told Adalytics: “One of the important objectives of agencies are they protect brands from unsafe environments, some of the references in the report showed how agencies themselves are vulnerable to this unsafe setting which questions their ability to protect brands from web pages which are detrimental to brand image..”
They continued: “Given a huge part of brands investments are on search, industry needs to put this topic as one of the priorities for 2024 and push for better products and measurement in the field of brand safety.”
Google said in a statement to the Financial Times that it was committed to complying with sanctions, and would no longer show adverts on any of the sites listed in the report.
