Pepsi, Countrywide Mortgage, Georgia-Pacific and State Farm Insurance, among others, have stopped advertising on Yahoo chat rooms pending further investigation.
On May 13, XBiz reported that the mother of an underage boy had filed a $10 million lawsuit against the Internet portal charging that its Candyman web group was functioning as a child porn distribution ring.
Since then, newspapers have uncovered a number of chat rooms with titles such as “9-17 Year Olds Wantin’ Sex” and “5 to 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex.”
One reporter from a Houston television station logged onto a chat room pretending to be a child and found men prodding children to run away from home and sending sexual pictures of themselves.
The chat rooms were listed in Yahoo’s “Education” category and were unwittingly sponsored by some of America’s largest corporations. For example, users accessing one site first had to click on a Star Wars-themed Pepsi ad.
Yahoo made an estimated $205 million last year from online ads.
A Pepsi spokesperson said his company was completely unaware of what was going on in the Yahoo chat rooms. Countrywide said it will adopt new measures to prevent a similar mistake in the future.
State Farm went a step further by demanding that Yahoo provide an explanation, pointing out that such an oversight violates its contract with the country’s largest insurer.
All of the companies involved immediately dropped their ads from Yahoo’s chat areas.
Yahoo did not return a call from XBiz for comment on the matter.