NSFW ads show up on YouTube again, despite Google's promise to fight them (Update)

Update: July 2, 2024 (3:30 PM ET): A YouTube spokesperson has reached out to Android Authority with the following statement:

We have strict policies against ads with sexually explicit content. If we find any ads that violate this policy, we remove them.

The spokesperson also mentioned that in 2023, YouTube had blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads (94.6 million of which contained ads with adult content) and suspended 12.7 million advertiser accounts. Additionally, the spokesperson says they have deployed LLMs to help in the fight against sketchy ads.

Original article: July 2, 2024 (6:12 AM ET): YouTube has had a problem with NSFW content for a while now. We reported on porn ads roughly eight months ago, and it looks like another viewer has spotted NSFW ads.

Redditor Academic_Yak2513 spotted two NSFW advertisements for a game, featuring cropped porn (ostensibly in a bid to evade YouTube’s censorship). Bizarrely, fellow Redditors noted that this sketchy advert used footage stolen from another porn game.

You can check out one of the offending ads in this Reddit thread, but do be warned that it’s pretty much just cropped porn.

What’s YouTube doing to combat this?

It’s not the first time YouTube has hosted sketchy adverts like this, either, as we spotted porn ads on the platform back in December 2023.

“Bad actors sometimes obfuscate content that violates our policies to evade detection. To combat this, we invest heavily in the enforcement of our policies and are constantly monitoring our network for abuse,” the company told us at the time.

We’ve nevertheless asked YouTube how these ads keep popping up on the platform and will update the article accordingly. It’s particularly embarrassing in light of the company’s aforementioned claim that it’s investing “heavily” in enforcing its policies.

These sketchy ads also come as Google steps up its crackdown on ad-blocking and YouTube Premium sign-ups via VPNs. It’s clearly investing in enforcing some of its policies then, but the company evidently needs to up the ante to combat offending ads and porn bots leaving comments.