The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2018
YouTube pulled Logan Paul out of premium ads and shelved his Originals
A video posted on New Year's Day cost the platform's top earner his premium ad deals and his own shows, all in one announcement.
YouTube · Google · 2018-01-10
What happened
On 2 January 2018 Logan Paul posted a video from Japan's Aokigahara forest showing the body of a man who had died there — a place so associated with suicide that the footage drew days of global condemnation before he deleted it and apologised. YouTube's first response was a statement about its rules on violent content; the pressure kept building.
On 10 January YouTube acted: his channels were removed from Google Preferred, the premium ad programme that sells top creators' inventory at top rates; he was cut from season four of the YouTube series Foursome; and his YouTube Red movie The Thinning: New World Order was put on hold. 'In light of recent events', the platform said. It was one of the largest channels on the platform.
Why it happened
- The video was posted to a channel built for advertisers: Google Preferred sells premium inventory, and a creator whose footage shows a dead body cannot be sold in it.
- YouTube's own product pipeline was the second cost — his movie and his series were tied to his name, so the same event shelved both at once.
- The first lukewarm response made the second one necessary: the platform's initial statement about its rules only extended the outcry it was trying to close.
The lesson
A creator's ad value is a single reputation: the platform did not ban him — it removed him from the premium tier, where the reputations that advertisers pay for actually live.
Aftermath
Paul's channel kept operating, but the premium ad placement and the YouTube Red projects were gone; the movie never returned with him. The episode forced YouTube to address the video head-on in an open letter over a week after the outcry began.
Sources
- YouTube removes Logan Paul as a preferred ad partner, puts his YouTube Red projects on hold — The Verge, 10 January 2018
- YouTube drops Logan Paul from Google Preferred and puts his Originals on hold — TechCrunch, 10 January 2018
- Logan Paul: YouTube pares back partnership after suicide video post — CNBC, 11 January 2018
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