Under pressure from bipartisan lawmakers, Google, Amazon, and other major ad industry players have shared the actions they’re taking after they inadvertently helped facilitate advertising on a site known to host child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Amazon has issued refunds to advertising customers whose ads appeared on the website. Google has blocked advertising on the site but did not clarify whether it will reimburse advertisers who were affected.
“We have always strictly prohibited ads that we serve from appearing next to content of this nature–this was a clear breach of our policies,” Amazon’s vice president of public policy Brian Huseman wrote in a letter addressed to Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), obtained by ADWEEK.
Earlier this month, the two senators demanded answers from the tech giants and other advertising groups after an Adalytics report found that, through advertising networks operated by Google and Amazon, ads from Fortune 500 brands appeared on an image-hosting site and a sister site that had been flagged by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for publishing CSAM.
Amazon and Google under fire
In his letter to lawmakers, Amazon’s Huseman said the company “immediately blocked these websites from any further ads through our systems.” The company has refunded all advertisers whose messages appeared on pages on the site in question, ibb.co and the associated img.bb, he said.
Only “a tiny portion of advertising spend for a small number of advertisers” was impacted, and the company has refunded all advertisers whose content appeared on the website in question, an Amazon spokesperson told ADWEEK.
“We regret that this occurred and took swift action to block these websites from showing our ads,” the spokesperson added. “We have strict policies in place against serving ads on content of this nature, and we are taking additional steps to help ensure this does not happen in the future.”
Meanwhile, in a response to senators issued by Google’s head of U.S. federal government affairs and public policy, Anne Wall, the company said it has “invested significant resources—in technology, specialized teams, and time—to deterring, detecting, removing, and reporting child sexual exploitation content and behavior.”
