Ads from major brands including Verizon, Amazon, and Popeyes ran next to sexually suggestive or racially offensive content on a popular short-form video platform XShorts, ADWEEK has confirmed.
At the time of writing, XShorts has over a million downloads and is the top app in the free entertainment category on the Google Play store. It describes itself on the Play store as a home for “short and hot videos” and outranks apps like Apple TV and Disney+.
The app has a ‘Teen’ rating, which, according to Google’s policies, indicates that it’s suitable for users aged 13 and up.
Following outreach from ADWEEK, Google determined that XShorts violates its policies and barred advertising on the app. In a statement, a Google spokesperson said: “We blocked the XShorts app’s ability to monetize.”
The tech giant is conducting additional reviews into XShorts.
A brief scroll on Tuesday surfaced a TikTok-like video feed of nearly nude women with sexually explicit captions, political humor, and racist memes—content that, an ADWEEK investigation found, was being funded by major brands.
At the time, banner ads appeared beneath videos as they played, and the platform also served full-screen interstitial ads between videos. ADWEEK observed ads for Shell, Amazon’s Audible, Walgreens, Microsoft, and Popeyes appearing on the app during a span of about five minutes.
Additional screenshots produced by a source, who asked to remain anonymous, showed ads from Verizon, Starbucks, Roblox, Gatorade, Wayfair, Instacart, Square, and others. Many of these appeared alongside highly sexualized content.
