Cisco has edited a blog post in which it said YouTube is an unsuitable place for its ads to appear.

The post, dated May 9th, said “ Cisco has adopted the most rigorous industry standards to help ensure our online advertising does not accidentally end up in the wrong place, such as on a streaming video with sensitive content or a site that does not align with the values of our brand.”

The old version of the post contained this paragraph:

At Cisco, we would rather not wait for something bad to happen. While Google and Facebook have made some strides to combat the issue, at this time we have pulled all online advertising from YouTube until the platform has met our standards. But we continue to use it as a platform to share our video content.

(Should you doubt us, here’s a screen shot of the old post and here it is in Google’s cache.)

The Register became aware of the post and, when we went looking for it, was greeted by a 404 error. But the post has since re-appeared, as follows, with changes italicised by The Register.

At Cisco, we would rather not wait for something bad to happen. We are working closely with all of our media partners to ensure that Cisco’s online advertising meets our stringent standards. We only advertise where those standards are met and where we can ensure inappropriate content is not shared.

That’s quite a change.

A Cisco spokesperson told us “Google is a significant advertising partner for Cisco, and we advertise across many of their platforms.”

“While we invest significantly with Google, we’ve temporarily paused advertising on YouTube due to instances where third party partners did not meet our brand guidelines.”

“Our intent was to address an industry-wide issue without singling out any partner or customer, we reposted the blog with our position on brand safety as intended.”

We’re therefore left with Cisco not wanting to admit a YouTube ads ban, but doing it anyway (temporarily).

In case that cash is burning a hole through Cisco’s pockets, we know a site that’s a fine place to reach IT types … ®