SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube and YouTube advertisers don’t seem to like U.S. President Donald Trump.
At TomoNews, we’ve noticed a pattern: Any video mentioning Donald Trump — no matter how innocuous — doesn’t get advertising.
Take for example our animation on Donald Trump’s presidential limo, which has generated more than 800,000 views. Who would be offended by that?
YouTube and advertisers, apparently.
This video earned us a healthy revenue stream from advertising. But then Donald Trump announced his controversial executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, and advertising revenue plummeted.
YouTube has completely demonetized the video. We checked other videos featuring Donald Trump and noticed a similar pattern.
One video about hair loss drug Propecia earns just 10 percent of what a normal video would get because the word “Trump” appears in the video’s headline and metadata. And it doesn’t matter if your video is for or against Trump. Just mention his name and YouTube punishes you by not giving you advertising.
YouTube maintains a list of negative keywords. If you mention “ISIS” in your headline or metadata, you won’t get advertising. YouTube apparently thinks “Donald Trump” is as bad as “ISIS.”
It’s no secret that Google has joined other Silicon Valley companies in opposing Trump’s immigration ban. But we’d never have thought Google would enact an advertising boycott on Trump-related news.
That’s bad for everyone.