In an article in Dagens Media (archive link) Henrik Widell sums up what happened when Google declared a Sloggi underwear billboard to be pornographic material.
Åsk Wäppling, who runs the advertising blog Adland.tv has been banned by Google's Adsense - for showing Sloggi advertising
Topics in the article:
- Yes, apparently Google thinks we serve our readers porn. I can't help but laugh, says Åsk Wäppling.
What happened - in a blog post, Åsk Wäppling published a picture from a Sloggi campaign to exemplify sexist advertising. Then she got an email from Google that the image violated Adsense's policy. She was given a certain tired time to remove the picture.
- They sent the message to a Google account that I don't use as often so I saw it too late and now they have blocked my account. It's financially noticeable, but at the same time, I think Google is more trouble than they are worth. Now I have given the advertising space to the City Mission instead.
How do you view Google's behavior?
- I think that if someone now made it difficult to go to my blog to look at the picture and then make their decision without even having read the text, it feels pretty strange. At the same time, Google's ads appear on sites with far worse content.
And this is not the first time Adland.tv gets its account suspended - but last time it was Adland.tv's Paypal account that was blocked for similar reasons.
- This means that I can't write about sexist advertising on my blog. You may think that both Google and Paypal are a bit of American puritans.
