Big advertisers — like Budweiser, Aveeno, Proctor & Gamble, and Swiffer — have been shocked to find that their ads are being paired with propaganda videos for Islamist militants currently overrunning vast swathes of the Middle East and beheading innocent prisoners on camera.
"From a contract perspective, these corporations that are paying lots of money to get YouTube clicks may not be that pleased when they find out that their video is placed right before an ISIS recruitment video," legal analyst Danny Cevallos told CNN.
In YouTube's defense, pre-roll ads are automatically inserted in front of videos and the site does have guidelines about what content is appropriate for advertising and for appearing on the site at all.
However, with 300 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute, monitoring that content is a daunting task, and YouTube certainly relies on its users to flag and report content that may violate the site's guidelines. Obviously, not every unfortunate ad-video combo is being caught. And it doesn't help that the social media profligacy of the Islamic State presents these platforms with a new challenge.
— Nervana Mahmoud (@Nervana_1) March 5, 2015
