Google is promising that real people will watch premium YouTube videos to make sure ads don't end up next to scary content

YouTube is promising advertisers that all videos sold as part of its 'Google Preferred' ad offering will soon be vetted by real people.
The move is in response to growing advertiser pressure. Preferred had been long billed as a premium, brand-safe alternative to advertising on TV. But some of the channels featured in Preferred featured content that spooked advertisers.
In addition, Google is upping its requirements for YouTube channels to be eligible to carry ads as it looks to get out in front of the brand-safety challenge.

Google is promising that real people will screen all YouTube videos that may potentially carry ads for its top spending marketers.

The human-labor-intensive promise is the latest response by the Alphabet-owned video giant to the non-stop noise regarding digital advertising and 'brand safety.'

Over the past year or so, big marketers have found their ads next to objectionable content, including hate videos and child-exploiting clips on YouTube. Just recently, a top YouTube star, Logan Paul, came under fire for posting a video featuring a dead body.

It would take a vast army of people for YouTube to screen every single video that gets posted to the video sharing site, where people upload 400 hours of content per minute.

In this case, YouTube is promising full human video vetting for Google Preferred, the company's four-year-old ad offering that enables marketers to run ads only in the top 5% of YouTube channels in terms of popularity. This policy will take effect by mid February in the US and mid March for the rest of the world.

A Business Insider investigation last year revealed that Google, which had billed Preferred as the cream of the crop for major advertisers contemplating shifting ad budgets from TV to YouTube, did not have a handle on what kinds of videos were featured as part of it. Several big agencies and marketers felt misled.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Google said it's expanding the definition of the Preferred offering to encompass both popular and brand safe. "

This way, YouTube should be able to keep advertisers away from any suspect channels while not inadvertently burying any smaller creators.

YouTube said it will also keep an eye out for channels that get flagged by the community for any abusive content.