Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is the latest major advertiser that pulled its ads from YouTube over inappropriate placement concerns. In a short statement published on Thursday, the New Jersey-based company announced it has decided to suspend all of its digital advertising on the Google-owned video platform, effective immediately. The healthcare conglomerate stated how it doesn’t want to pay for advertising that might appear next to offensive videos as such content is inherently incompatible with its brand values. The company’s sentiment is similar to those already expressed by Verizon, AT&T, and numerous other major firms that have recently suspended their ads on YouTube due to placement concerns.
While the Google-owned online video service has yet to comment on this latest turn of developments, J&J’s decision marks another threat to its bottom line that is mostly fueled by selling ads. The ordeal started earlier this month when several major advertisers noted how their YouTube ads are being placed next to extremist and otherwise offensive videos. As a result of that troubling revelation, the UK government pulled its ads from Google’s service last week and majors advertisers like The Guardian, Channel 4, L’Oréal, and Verizon have quickly followed suit. YouTube already apologized for the issues and assured its clients that it’s hard at work trying to fix them, but it seems that many companies aren’t willing to wait for the service to fulfill that promise.
Regardless, there’s little reason to doubt that Google isn’t trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible seeing how YouTube is one of its major growth engines that already earned the company billions of dollars. Just last year, the Mountain View-based tech giant recorded $5.58 billion in revenue from YouTube, market research firm eMarketer found, as reported by Reuters. As an increasing number of major advertisers are currently in the process of pulling their ads from YouTube and making sure the general public is aware of their decisions, more companies will likely follow suit in the coming days. It’s still unclear how long YouTube might take to revamp its placement algorithms but an update on the situation should follow soon.