PewDiePie Show Canceled By Google's YouTube
15 February 2017 - 3:44AM
Dow Jones News
By Jack Nicas
YouTube is canceling its top star's show and removing his
channel from its preferred-advertising program after he made
anti-Semitic jokes or showed Nazi imagery in nine videos, a setback
to the site's efforts to persuade companies to advertise before its
videos.
YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.'s Google, made the decision to
distance itself from its most popular video creator -- 27-year-old
Felix Kjellberg, who goes by PewDiePie -- after The Wall Street
Journal reported on a string of anti-Semitic videos he made over
the past several months.
YouTube canceled the second season of Mr. Kjellberg's show,
"Scare PewDiePie," which anchored YouTube's $10-a-month
subscription service, a major bet for the company.
The company also pulled his PewDiePie YouTube channel from its
Google Preferred program that lets advertisers buy space before
"some of the most engaging and brand safe" videos on YouTube. The
PewDiePie channel has amassed 53 million subscribers, nearly double
the next most popular YouTube channel.
Mr. Kjellberg will still be able to post videos to his channel
and earn revenue from ads sold before his videos, but those ads
will only be sold through an automated ad auction that generally
fetches lower prices than the preferred program.
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 14, 2017 11:29 ET (16:29 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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