Anti-Porn Group Cheering After Google Stops Pornography Ads

By Jared Freeman, Monday, June 23, 2014

An anti-pornography organization is celebrating a recent move by Google to eliminate pornographic and sexually explicit ads from its AdWords program. Google's AdWords program displays ads on its ubiquitous search results pages.

In this blog post, Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of Morality in Media, claimed victory after the search giant informed advertisers that they would no longer accept ads that "promote graphic depictions of sexual acts."

Here's the text of Google's email to advertisers who may have been in violation of the new policy:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,
We're writing to remind you about a change to Google's advertising policies we announced in our Policy Change Log that may affect your AdWords account: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/4271759
Beginning in the coming weeks, we'll no longer accept ads that promote graphic depictions of sexual acts including, but not limited to, hardcore pornography; graphic sexual acts including sex acts such as masturbation; genital, anal, and oral sexual activity.
When we make this change, Google will disapprove all ads and sites that are identified as being in violation of our revised policy. Our system identified your account as potentially affected by this policy change. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your ads and sites to comply so that your campaigns can continue to run.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

Hawkins wrote that Morality in Media, which opposes "pornography and indecency through public education and application of the law," met with Google in May and asked for such revisions to their policy.

Click here to read Hawkins' blog post on the organization's Porn Harms website.