YouTube Vs. The Fringe; Will Contextual Ads Boom?

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

The House Always Wins

As YouTube keeps dialing up brand safety protections, creators in marginal or disreputable categories are feeling the brunt. A relatively small but active group of creators who stream from inside casinos (because people like to watch others gambling) have found their accounts suddenly suspended or “demonetized” (blocked from carrying ads) as they were suddenly deemed to fall on the wrong side of YouTube’s inscrutable creator policies. The casinos don’t mind the gambling vloggers – indeed, some pay for the exposure – but it’s the kind of content many top brands don’t want to end up next to, reports The Atlantic. Creators such as these have few options when YouTube pulls the plug. “You spend so many years to build it up and they can just erase it with one button,” says Swedish gambling YouTuber Kim Hultman. More.

In This Context

What’s old is new again as GDPR ushers in a new boom of contextual advertising. Publisher sources tell Digiday that some large agencies have suspended audience-based campaigns until there’s more certainty around how the GDPR will be enforced. Others have increased the amount of contextual buying they do alongside audience-based buys as a way to supplement lost reach. “We want to work with all the publishers that are important to us, and have gained the consent necessary for us to continue working with behavioral and audience data,”said Robin O’Neill, managing director of digital trading at GroupM. More.

State Of Disrepair

Google stopped running local and state election ads or ads supporting ballot measures in Washington state on Thursday. It’s the first time Google has fully suspended political spending in a state, GeekWire reports. Washington’s attorney general filed a suit against Google and Facebook this week for allegedly failing to meet the state’s political ad disclosure law. Rules would require the online platforms to provide the “approximate description of the geographic locations and audiences targeted, and total number of impressions generated by the advertisement or communication” for all political buys. More.

But Wait, There’s More!