Taking Offense
Google's Video Nasties
The honeymoon for online ads is over.
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Google is battling a storm in the U.K., where hundreds of big advertisers from McDonald's Corp. to Tesco Plc have suspended marketing on its sites because of fears that their messages may be displayed near offensive content.
New measures announced by the Alphabet Inc. unit fall way short of tackling the problem. They give advertisers a bit more control over where their ads appear on YouTube and on the Google network that places ads around the web. But all the tools are made by Google itself, leaving the world's biggest seller of advertising to police itself.