AdWords, YouTube and Adult Content: This is funny!

As part of my campaign for Governor of New York State, I did a quick video to show why I don't fit in with typical politicians.

You can see it on YouTube as NY Politics: Top 10 List

One of the things I'm doing in the campaign is a very small amount of advertising. In particular I'm advertising this video on YouTube through Google AdWords. Last night I got a message that my ad had been "disapproved."

Investigating, I found that the disapproval was due to "adult content." So now I'm scratching my head. The ad reads like this:

NY Politics: Top 10 List
Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and
Warren Redlich? Governor?
wredlich

I don't see any adult content there.

The image accompanying it has a picture of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, with the text: "#6: Never had cigar with intern"

So I understand the story behind that could be seen as adult content, but the image itself and the words can't.

So I contacted AdWords support (which is generally quite good). Here's what they said:

To clarify, the ad was disapproved because the landing page and video itself comment on prohibited content such as prostitution and tobacco
products. In order for this ad to be approved, please edit it so that it
complies with our policies.

Tobacco products? I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read that.

Within the video, the only "prostitution" content is the line "Never caught with a hooker."

Is AdWords going overboard? If you do a Google search on terms like "Eliot Spitzer" or "Monica Lewinsky", with Google's "SafeSearch" set to strict, the top results are Wikipedia entries that have much more detailed descriptions of the relevant incidents.