Craig Kelly Wasted $2 Million On YouTube Ads That Have Already Been Axed For Policy Violations
Lol.
Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party has blown a small fortune on YouTube ads that have now been removed from the platform for violating advertising policies, according to Google’s transparency report.
The UAP has spent a whopping $2.73 million on Youtube ads, specifically, since controversial ex-Liberal Craig Kelly joined the party back in August. However, three-quarters of these ads have since been removed for violating policies.
For context, the next biggest spender on YouTube ads is the Labor Party — which has spent $60,750.
It’s unclear which videos have been removed, or which policy the content allegedly violated, but as much as 75 percent of the content has been removed so far.
The news comes after Labor’s shadow assistant minister for communications Tim Watts queried Google on why the UAP was allowed to remain on the platform after some content had already been removed. He also noted that Kelly — the new face of the party — has received a strike from YouTube as well.
“The question is: why is the member for Hughes and the UAP’s YouTube page still operating after repeatedly violating YouTube’s policies, let alone spending millions of dollars promoting medical misinformation during a pandemic? Given the member for Hughes’s record of spreading misinformation and his intent to match the 2019 election spend of the UAP, the potential for harm is obvious and Google must act in a transparent and proactive way,” he said in a submission to Google.
According to Google’s Transparency Report – which also shows how many ads and how much the party has spent on advertising over time – twelve videos have been removed for policy violations to-date. Interestingly, one of the removed ads received over 10 million views, while multiple others received between 1 and 10 million.
It does not appear that any other political party has had advertisements removed for policy violations during the same period.
Junkee has reached out to UAP for comment.