YouTube Halts Logan Paul Ads, Sets Stricter Terms for Stars

(Bloomberg) -- YouTube temporarily suspended ads on the channels of the controversial internet video celebrity Logan Paul, halting an income stream estimated at millions of dollars and putting a more aggressive content policy into gear.

“After careful consideration, we have decided to temporarily suspend ads on Logan Paul’s YouTube channels,” YouTube said in a statement. “This is not a decision we made lightly, however, we believe he has exhibited a pattern of behavior in his videos that makes his channel not only unsuitable for advertisers, but also potentially damaging to the broader creator community.”

Paul is one of the highest-profile stars YouTube has sanctioned so far. In a blog post this month, YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki said the site is developing policies that would lead to consequences if a creator does something “egregious that causes significant harm to our community as a whole.” Such instances, while rare, can “damage the reputation and revenue” of fellow creators, she said.

Paul’s manager and publicist didn’t respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Google, part Alphabet Inc., is making the biggest changes to ad rules on YouTube since the site’s inception in 2005 after a boycott last year by some big brand marketers. The company has to walk a fine line between placating advertisers and supporting creators, who helped make the service so successful and often earn money by being edgy or outrageous.

Late on Friday, YouTube released more detailed guidelines which included a warning that the company could pull ads or boot creators off the service if they "cause harm" to other producers and consumers. 

"In the past, we felt our responses to some of these situations were slow and didn’t always address our broader community’s concerns," Ariel Bardin, vice president of product management at YouTube, wrote in an accompanying blog post.

YouTube released the new rules after top creators, including Casey Neistat, expressed concern about how Paul’s antics would affect them. Neistat reached out directly to YouTube chief business officer Robert Kyncl, who sat down for an interview about the matter, Neistat said in a video. The interview will run Monday.

Paul has more than 16 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, and he was on Google Preferred, which sells premium ads for the most popular videos. However, the company pulled him from the program after he filmed an apparent suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest. 

After the incident, Paul stopped producing his daily video blog for a while, but returned to the platform in January, saying he’d learned from his mistakes. A recent video showed Paul shooting a Taser stun gun at dead rats.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Bergen in San Francisco at mbergen10@bloomberg.net, Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at lshaw31@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Andrew Pollack

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