Thread by @sophiasgaler

If you’ve been targeted ads from Israel’s foreign ministry on YouTube this past fortnight, you’re not alone.

I’ve learned, using Semrush, that they’ve spent nearly $7.1 million on YouTube ads, including some horrifying videos. Here’s what I found out 1/

Semrush is an analytics platform that estimates what accounts have spent on ad campaigns. Together with Google’s ad transparency center, we can see they've heavily targeted France, Germany and the UK, then some others, with 88 ads Oct 7-19. 2/

I gathered all the countries ads have been directed to. In total, that spend of nearly $7.1 million = nearly a billion impressions. 3/

The UK has had an estimated $1.1m spent on it alone. This is what the past fortnight’s ad campaign looks like, next to a pie chart of how that total spend was divided. Viewer’s discretion is advised for the rest of this thread; I’m hiding stuff, but it’s still a lot. 4/

I’ve noticed some videos have been appearing and disappearing from the ad center. Some are poss violating YouTube ad guidelines. Last week @politico reported Google removed 30 ads after they reached out for comment. For context here’s their piece 5/politico.eu/article/israel…

@politico Google told them they don’t allow ads containing violent language, gruesome or disgusting imagery, or graphic images or accounts of physical trauma. Here is what it says on YouTube itself which is a useful read. But ads like this keep being uploaded and activated. 6/

This one in particular keeps appearing and disappearing, I managed to catch it yesterday in the ad center when it was live and screenshot it. It disappeared a second time on my watch later in the evening. It claims to show the autopsy of a child burned alive 7/

The Transparency Center doesn’t show us removed ads – but Semrush shows some. I can still see the Crimes Against Humanity vid now in Semrush where it was active on 14th Oct for UK audiences + others, featuring a half-naked, unconscious hostage and body bags. 8/

All of the videos can be viewed as organic videos on their YT page, where only some of them have been monetised to become ads. What you can see on the channel is some videos with strangely inflated viewcounts - those are the ones that have been ‘ad-ified’. 9/

That’s all for now. I’d never seen YouTube ads like this and wanted to find out the journey that they had been on to get to me. The figures here are all from 8pm yesterday. If you want me to look at anything else on Semrush, I’ll have access for the rest of the weekend - lmk 10/