YouTube bans gambling and alcohol ads from the main ad slot

Video sharing giant YouTube will hereafter stop accepting ads which are related to gambling, alcohol, politics or prescription drug items for its masthead slots. The masthead slot is the area that appears on the top of the website and the application. Google while talking about the fresh changes said that it will help to improve the users to have a better experience.

People who do not know about masthead slot, it is the first thing that the users see when they open YouTube. This means that the move by the company is actually in a way not to encourage things like gambling, alcohol, drugs and other similar things. This would also help YouTube to be inclusive for everyone. It also makes sense for not including ads of politics as it will help the website to remain unbiased and will also help to avoid any controversies. For instance, the previous US president Donald Trump, during the 2020 elections had purchased a slot for three days.

The ad support page of YouTube has mentioned that the masterhead slot can have a great influence on the users but now the company will no longer encourage certain ads in certain spaces. Meanwhile Google already has s system in place that limits the number of gambling or alcohol related ads that the users see on YouTube. In 2020, the company had changed the slot that showed targeted ads instead of engaging the place for the entire day.

Since many years, the search engine has been trying hard to bring a balance in its policies as per the requirements and demand of the users. It recently stepped up against encouragement of hate speech in the form of political misinformation and keywords around COVID-19. The move might also have been taken under circumstances when the lawmakers have a strict eye on the ads business in terms of anti-trust enforcement.

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