Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) recently decided to remove all online ads from YouTube amid concerns that ads are sometime displayed alongside sensitive videos on the platform.
The move was revealed by the company’s chief marketing officer Karen Walker in a blog post, which further said that Cisco would not like its advertisements to appear in the wrong place, like on streaming videos with inappropriate content.
However, the network gear maker added that it will keep using YouTube for sharing its video content, according to the blog post that was later removed from the company’s website.
YouTube, owned by Google, said that it has joined hands with advertisers to make changes. A spokesperson at Google said in an interview that the company has partnered with advertisers to make key changes to how it approaches monetization on its famous video-sharing platform with improved controls, stricter policies and greater transparency. When YouTube identifies an ad mistakenly running alongside video that doesn’t meets its policies, it immediately eliminates those ads, the spokesperson added.
Cisco’s latest move follows a report published by CNN last month that said ads from more than 300 firms, including giants such as Facebook and Cisco, were displayed alongside extremist content on YouTube. The report further said that those companies may have unintentionally helped in financing some of those videos through their ads.
YouTube said in a report released in April that it had removed nearly 5 million videos from its platform due to content policy violations during the fourth quarter last year.
However, famous brands continue to advertise on YouTube to target a massive audience, particularly younger generations. YouTube claims that it has more than a billion users and those users watch billion hours of content on its platform.