Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The French advertising powerhouse and the British government want more control over where their ads run.

Havas is pulling all spending from Google and YouTube in the United Kingdom, citing the desire to have more control of its inventory in hopes of keeping brands away from inappropriate or offensive content.According to a report in The Guardian, the French advertising giant’s decision came after talks broke down related to Google’s inability to “provide specific reassurances” related to where video and display ads appear.

The report cites content showing up in YouTube alongside videos of white nationalists and terrorists. The news about Havas—which spends around 175 million euros ($188.2 million) annually on digital advertising clients in the U.K.—comes alongside a report that the British government and other organizations also pulled their ads from the tech giant....

“Slightly disconcertingly, Lewis says he is “so thrilled” by the controversy. This is not because American voters were misled but because Facebook and Google have been embarrassed and forced to reconsider the complex algorithms they deploy to present news articles to their users.

It’s a matter of schadenfreude. Lewis has spent much of the three years since he became chief executive at Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal “badgering away” at Google and Facebook, trying to persuade them to change their news distribution methods.

“We kept warning them, saying ‘This is an accident waiting to happen – you are treating fake news in the same way as you are treating Wall Street Journal news. This is going to end up biting you.’ And so here it is, biting them!”...