Google recently apologized for running advertisements on objectionable YouTube videos. Jack Nicas with The Wall Street Journal followed up by showing that ads are still showing on racist videos. This caused a huge backlash with major brands pulling ads from YouTube, but those brands continue to run ads on the Search Network. Which begs the question, do targeted search ads face the same problem?

The Snowflake Test

The basic premise for this test is to append racist and objectionable terms with the major brands who suspended their YouTube ads. The results were surprising. Warning: Offensive and racist terms are contained within this article. Please leave the page now if you are sensitive.

• Toyota

Let’s start simple by using the word “racist” which is more of an offensive trait than an offensive term. Sure enough, Toyota serves ads to those who want to buy a racist Toyota Camry.

• Coca Cola

What if I up the ante by using one of the most offensive terms in America, the ‘n-word.’ Sorry Coca Cola, your targeted search network ads appear when using this word in a Google search.

• Dish Network

Dish Network is not immune. It’s interesting that their TV Show extension was triggered for this term. But this is getting tedious. Let’s only do one more.

• Amazon

Amazon delivers…even on the ‘c-word.’ Actually, this is the only time where an ad is actually relevant because Amazon sells products with this word in the description. But the ad is all the way at the bottom of the first page.

Surprising Results?

As I said, the results were surprising, but maybe I did not properly explain why it is surprising. It’s not surprising that ads show when these terms are appended to search terms. It’s surprising that these major brands have an entire marketing department who did not think to add these offensive terms as negative keywords. You usually do not want to spend money on people clicking your ads when they already have a negative impression of your company.

On the other hand, these terms are obviously very rarely searched. It doesn’t make any logical sense to search the gibberish that I typed in. A more common offensive term would be “Insert Brand Name sucks.” However, you will almost never see an ad on that search term because it is somewhat common and marketing specialists eliminate it to avoid wasting ad spend on that term.

What Should Google Do? What Can You Do?

Should Google automatically prevent ads from serving on search queries including offensive terms? That’s probably a good idea.

However, that’s probably not going to change unless the big advertisers stop advertising on Google. Until that happens, Google provides you the tools to prevent your ad from showing on offensive terms. It’s up to you to manage the AdWords platform properly or hire someone who can.