Large organizations and brands saw their advertising dollars funneled to videos amplifying inflammatory narratives, underscoring how difficult it can be to maintain brand safety online.
On YouTube, an ad for the car company Mazda appeared before a video that repeated the racist falsehood that Haitian migrants in Ohio were “eating ducks on the side of the road.” An ad for the software giant Adobe showed up alongside another video that claimed “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
Even an ad for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, was placed ahead of a video that spread the unsupported statement that migrants were “going to parks, grabbing ducks, cutting their heads off and eating them.”
Many advertisers have tried for years to avoid sharing space with content about polarizing politics, pandemics, hate speech or misinformation, for fear of damaging customer perception and risking public censure. That ads appeared anyway on YouTube ahead of falsehoods about Haitian migrants underscores the difficulty advertisers face in maintaining brand safety in an especially volatile election year.
Just this month, researchers discovered advertisements on YouTube for more than a dozen large organizations and consumer brands that monetized xenophobic (and quickly debunked) claims. Advertising dollars flowed both to YouTube and to the commentators it allowed to amplify inflammatory and racist narratives, according to a report by Eko, a group focused on corporate accountability.
The videos that were accompanied by the ads garnered nearly 1.6 million views on YouTube in a 72-hour period after former President Donald J. Trump promoted a falsehood about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, during the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Eko found. The group estimated that the commentators likely earned a few thousand dollars collectively from the advertisements.
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