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Google and Meta employees caught targeting teens in ad scheme
- A group within Google and Meta worked together to run a secret ad campaign targeting 13 to 17-year-olds on YouTube.
- The group found a way to skirt Google’s own rules against targeting teenagers.
- Google has ended the campaign and is now conducting an investigation into the matter.
Personalizing digital ads targeting children has long been a controversial business practice. To that point, Google introduced rules back in 2021 prohibiting targeting ads towards anyone under the age of 18. A new report, however, says that a rogue group of Google employees worked together with Meta employees to break the company’s own rules.
Google has a demographic of users in its ad program that it labels as “unknown.” Based on firm’s help page, this unknown category includes “people whose age, gender, parental status or household income we haven’t identified.” According to the Financial Times, some Google and Meta staff were using the category to funnel Instagram ads on YouTube that skewed toward teens.
Under normal circumstances, the ages of these users should be unknown as the help page says. However, it appears the employees were able to use app download information and online activity to figure out “with a high degree of confidence” that the group consisted of younger users.
By circumventing Google’s rules that block targeting ads towards teens, it would allow advertisers to significantly grow their audience reach. It’s reported that the workaround started getting exploited after Google experienced slumping advertising earnings and young users began migrating from Meta’s platforms to TikTok.
Additionally, the two parties partnered with Spark Foundary, a subsidiary of ad giant Publicis, to launch the marketing campaign in Canada. This campaign started in February and ended in April of this year. The program was later trialed in the US in May, with plans to extend the campaign overseas where it would promote additional services, like Facebook.
It’s reported that the campaign has now been shut down and Google is conducting an investigation into the matter. “We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period,” Google told the outlet. “We’ll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies.”