Double trouble for YouTube

Part 1: YouTube enables sexualised exploitation of children

This week's most considerable controversy is the sexualised exploitation of children on YouTube. It started with a Reddit post and a YouTube video, revealing how a search for something like “bikini haul,” a sub-genre of video content where women show bikinis they’ve purchased, can lead to disturbing and exploitative videos of children. The videos aren’t pornographic, but the comment sections are full of people time-stamping specific scenes that sexualise the child or children in the video. Comments about how beautiful young girls are also dominating the comment section.

The finding has sparked a wave of advertiser boycotts, including IKEA and Nestle, and heightened tensions among the site's biggest channels. YouTube currently has just under a billion monthly users and is the world's second-largest search engine, just behind Google. It's been about a year since YouTube's last large-scale scandal involving child exploitation on its site, and the platform promised then to address the problem.

Following this new scandal, YouTube has once again put the responsibility on YouTubers – instead of hiring more moderators and building better tools to flag abuse. The company now expects creators, not only to keep a hectic production schedule required to remain in algorithmic favour, but also to act as their community moderators.

Part 2: YouTube gets pressured by advertisers to demonetise anti-vax content

While Facebook vows to stop recommending anti-vaccination content to users after pressure from lawmakers in the midst of a national measles outbreak in the US, YouTube is still promoting videos like “You’ll Be Glad You Watched This Before Vaccinating Your Child!”

On Friday, YouTube said it would stop running ads on channels that promote anti-vax content, stating that such videos fall under its policy prohibiting the monetisation of videos with “dangerous and harmful” content. The response from YouTube comes after advertisers pulled their ads from these videos, following inquiries from the media.

While the top search results for queries like “are vaccines safe” are usually from authorised sources – such as a children’s hospital - YouTube's Up Next algorithm frequently recommends anti-vaccination videos.

CMOs need to take a more active role in digital transformation

A new report from Forrester (Forrester clients only) shows that CMOs are missing in the digital transformation process, and few are actively leading or being deeply involved in the digitalisation of their organisations. Instead, CIOs, COOs, and CDOs are doing the work, but they don't represent the customer's voice. CMOs should play a key role in shaping the brand vision, incorporating tech-enabled brand promises into corporate strategy, and ensuring digital transformation delivers a better customer experience.

Another new report, Altimeter’s "The State of Digital Transformation” (free with registration), finds that CIOs own or sponsor digital transformation initiatives for 28% of the respondents in its study. In comparison, CEOs serve that leadership role for 23%. Only 3% of CMOs in North America owned digital transformation in 2018, according to the report.

One data point supporting the need for CMOs in digital transformation is that 41% of companies are making investments without thorough customer research.

Instagram is planning to become Pinstagram

Rumours are spreading that Instagram is planning to attack Pinterest the same way it did Snapchat, just as Pinterest files to go public. Code buried in the Instagram app for Android shows that Instagram has prototyped an option to create public “Collections” that users can contribute to collaboratively. Instagram users can already collect images in private Collections, a feature launched two years ago. These collectors let users save and organise their favourite posts. The new feature would allow users to make these Collections public, strengthening Instagram's position as a competitor to Pinterest.

The new feature could not only give users the ability to curate others' posts to express their identity through the things they love, but also reduce "content stealing" by providing an alternative to screenshotting and reposting others' content. Naturally, this new feature could be troublesome for Pinterest’s upcoming $12 billion IPO.

Tool of the week: LeadFeeder

LeadFeeder connects to your Google Analytics account, decodes your website visitors' IP addresses, and displays the companies they belong to.

You don't need to install anything on your site; it connects to your Google Analytics account, and you can connect it to MailChimp to see if people who follow your newsletters are visiting your site.

With their paid version, you can see the time someone spends on your site, who the person is (when that's possible for instance if they've signed up for a demo or to a newsletter), and you can feed the leads into your CRM.