YouTube is continuing to experience some (admittedly, fairly minor) problems related to the ‘boycott’ of their platform for advertising. Major brands, especially P&G, began avoiding YouTube because of privacy concerns and other issues related to being able to ensure their ads were being displayed only in the ways and places that they wanted.
The Google owned company remains down about 5% from their peak in terms of top North American advertisers, which is fairly significant when you look at the total ad spend brought in by these large players. At its peak, the boycott had 13 major brands, and six of those have since begun running ads on YouTube again. The six companies include General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, AT&T, and Verizon.
These companies are moving more of their budget back to traditional television commercials, which are more transparent.
There hasn’t been any significant report that smaller advertisers are abandoning YouTube, however, so overall this boycott hasn’t had the major impact that many hoped. While YouTube claims to be making efforts to improve transparency and ensure advertisers are getting exactly what they want, very little has actually been done at this point. If companies like P&G continue to stay away, it may be enough pressure on the company to speed up their efforts, but at this point, it doesn’t really look like it.
