Dance in the Vampire Bund (lolicon)
Dance in the Vampire Bund, Sponsored on Youtube by AT&T (among others)

Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil” and “Do the right thing” and yet they profit off child exploitation. It’s the parent company of the largest online advertising network, Google Adsense. According to Adsense Terms of Service (TOS), simply linking to pornography is a violation…that is unless a website has enough traffic to make it worthwhile for Google.

Manga & anime (Japanese comics and cartoons) frequently involve characters of questionable age in sexual situations but there’s nothing ambiguous about the genres known as Lolicon and Shotacon, in which prepubescent girls and boys are blatantly sexualized or even abused. While no actual children are involved, these images are still considered illegal under the United States’ Protect Act and the UK’s Coroners and Justice Act.

Google Adsense allows manga websites hosting the following lolicon titles:

Dance in the Vampire Bund
A prepubescent vampire in love with a 17-year-old werewolf (child nudity in both manga & anime).

Kodomo No Jikan
A 3rd grader’s stepfather wants to marry her but she wants to be with her teacher (child nudity, masturbation, molestation in both manga & anime).

Omamori Himari
A demon hunter with a harem of female demons, including a prepubescent girl who takes her clothes off and dry humps the main character to heal him in episode 5 (nudity is censored but the orgasmic moaning is not).

Chu-Bra!!
Middle school children start an underwear club (child nudity and fondling in both manga & anime).

Google Adsense sucks

It’s not really surprising that Google is advertising on these manga websites considering they host the same content. Dance in the Vampire Bund is hosted on YouTube, which is owned by Google.

Google Adsense certainly isn’t the only advertising network sponsoring lolicon but it is the most respected…and the most hypocritical.

“If your site has content which you wouldn’t be comfortable viewing at work or with family members around, then it probably isn’t an appropriate site for Google ads,” states the policy on adult content.

These aren’t small websites flying under the radar. Many of the sites rank in the Top 1000 Adsense sites (http://serversiders.com/toplist/adsense) such as Animextremist.com (#237), Mangaupdates.com (#549), Mangatoshokan.com (#833), and Foroanime.com (#900). It’s not hidden content either. In fact, it’s openly listed under the aforementioned lolicon and shotacon genres. These sites even advertise themselves with Google Adwords using specific lolicon titles like “Kodomo No Jikan” as keywords. In other words, there’s no plausible deniability. Google had no response when notified about the problem by L7 World.

Advertisers’ Responses:

Most of the ads are from the University of San Francisco Online (usanfranonline.com) & PRweb.com which don’t seem to care where their ads appear in general. However, there are many more established organizations that you’d think would keep better track of where their advertising dollars are going such as: AT&T, Verizon, Disney, All State, Ace, Circuit City, Gillette, Frito Lay, American Express, ESPN and even the NATIONAL GUARD! But while Google tried to keep its dirty little secret, the advertisers quickly responded.

Gillette:

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Whether it’s websites or television programs, if it doesn’t fit our criteria for family-friendly viewing, we’re not sure why our ad would appear. We specifically request ads for our products not be aired during controversial programs, and I’m sharing your message with our sponsorship team. You can be sure we’ll continue to examine our sponsorship principles and actions.

Thanks again for letting us know.

Janet
Gillette Team



Aeria Games

Thank you for letting us know of this situation. We are writing back to
let you know that your message has been sent to the following
departments:

Management (Because we want them to know about a problem this serious)
Marketing (So that they can look into ways to resolve this)
Network Operations (So that they can look into ways that we can block
this on our end)

We can not know how this will be resolved, but from past experience, we
can say that it will most likely be complicated.

We here at Aeria Games would like to maintain a family friendly
enviornmment, and despite allowing some adult (18+) content, we do not
support, condone, or want to be assocaited in any way with child
pornography. We would like to thank you for doing your part in make our
site (and the world in general) a better place.

Team Aeria



Frito-Lay

Thank you for writing to us. We appreciate your email regarding this sensitive concern. We have forwarded your note to our legal and advertising groups for further review/investigation. Frito-Lay is a family friendly company and would never intentionally advertise in conjunction with such inappropriate businesses. We will be taking steps to ensure similar actions do not take place in the future.

Tina
Frito-Lay Consumer Affairs



Optimum

Thank you for your recent inquiry.  We have escalated this issue to the proper department for investigation. Thank you for bringing our attention to this matter.

Sharon
Cablevision – Shared Services

Conclusion:

Contrary to comments otherwise, nowhere does this article call for a manga ban. It relates only to websites being allowed to violate Google Adsense TOS simply because they’re profitable. The same can be said for about risque websites like Gawker.com & PerezHilton.com. Such sites skirt the rules not just because of their profitability but because many advertisers don’t mind being displayed on a “mature website.” In the end, it shouldn’t come down to an arbitrarily enforced TOS but what advertisers want. And the advertisers have spoken. The manga websites have voluntarily taken down inappropriate content to comply with TOS. Those that haven’t simply can’t use Adsense.

Comments have been closed due to abuse. Most were about censorship, which isn’t the case. Adult manga will continue to be created and shared on manga websites, which is piracy and a whole nother can of worms.