Google in revamp of operations to tackle UK advert scandal

Google has pledged to police its websites better by hiring new staff and overhauling its policies after UK firms suspended advertising because it appeared on extremist videos.

The company indicated that while its changes would take some time to be fully implemented, it said it would seek to resolve any complaints within a matter of hours.

The shake-up follows a storm of protest from major UK companies and others - including the Government - which pulled their advertising from Google's YouTube site after it was shown alongside hate-filled content uploaded by users.

Google, which has apologised for the situation , said its new policies would give advertisers more control over where their ads are shown - admitting it had struggled to police the average 400 hours of video uploaded to the platform each minute.

:: Google's ID crisis at heart of ad row

It said it was aiming to block any content that attacked people based on their race, religion, sexual orientation or gender.

Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, said in a blog post: "We'll be hiring significant numbers of people and developing new tools powered by our latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising."

He added: "We're changing the default settings for ads so that they show on content that meets a higher level of brand safety and excludes potentially objectionable content that advertisers may prefer not to advertise against.

"In addition, we'll introduce new controls to make it easier for brands to exclude higher risk content and fine-tune where they want their ads to appear."

Google has been under fire on several fronts in recent days over its apparent inability to deal with the problem until the point when advertisers started a boycott.

The US firm generates over £6bn in revenue from the UK market annually - the majority of that coming from advertising.

The boss of FTSE 100 advertising firm WPP (Frankfurt: A1J2BZ - news) , Sir Martin Sorrell, raised the prospect of compensation for advertisers in an interview with Sky News on Monday.

The chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee of MPs (BSE: MPSLTD.BO - news) , Yvette Cooper, said the firm could afford to do "far more, far faster" to battle hate content.

The committee has made it clear that it does not see the issue being one only for Google.

Last week, it summoned bosses from Google, Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) and Twitter (Frankfurt: A1W6XZ - news) , to question them about the action the web giants are taking to remove extreme content from their platforms.