Verizon and AT&T next to boycott advertising on Google's network

Along with Havas, the world’s sixth-largest advertising and marketing company, AT&T and Verizon have also joined the boycott against Google for displaying their brand's ads alongside controversial content - videos promoting terrorism or anti-Semitism.

AT&T and Verizon are the latest to pull advertising from Google’s display network because they appeared alongside controversial content. Recently, Havas pulled its UK clients’ ads from Google and YouTube until they are reassured that their "ads won’t play ahead of videos with objectionable content."

“We are deeply concerned that our ads may have appeared alongside YouTube content promoting terrorism and hate. Until Google can ensure that this won’t happen again, we are removing our ads from Google’s non-search platforms,” AT&T said in an official statement.

“We take careful measure to ensure our brand is not impacted negatively. Once we were notified that our ads were appearing on non-sanctioned websites, we took immediate action to suspend this type of ad placement and launched an investigation. We are working with all of our digital advertising partners to understand the weak links so we can prevent this from happening in the future,” Verizon said in a press release.

Verizon and AT&T are the third and fourth-largest advertisers in the United States, with the latter alone spending $941.96 million on advertising last year.

Responding to Havas' action, Google promised to give brands more control over where their advertisements run and make it easier for them to alert the company when ads appear in problematic places.

A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch, “We don’t comment on individual customers, but as announced, we’ve begun an extensive review of our advertising policies and have made a public commitment to put in place changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear. We’re also raising the bar for our ads policies to further safeguard our advertisers’ brands.”

Other organisations that have already plugged off Google ads include the U.K. government, Sainbury’s, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, GlaxoSmithKline, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Guardian newspaper.