Meta and Google Secretly Targeted Minors on YouTube With Instagram Ads

Meta and Google teamed up to run a secret campaign that deliberately targeted 13- to 17-year-olds with Instagram ads on YouTube, according to the Financial Timesbreaking the search giant’s own rules against advertising to children.

The publication reports that Google targeted ads to a subset of users labeled as “unknown” in its advertising systems, in an attempt to disguise the group as being aimed at teenagers. According to a Google Ads help pageThe “unknown” demographic category refers to people whose age, gender, parental status or household income are supposedly unidentified and can allow advertisers to reach “a significantly broader audience” when selected.

However, Google could use app downloads and online activity to determine “with a high degree of confidence” that the “unknown” group was populated by younger users, reports the TF. Google employees are said to have used this loophole to circumvent the company’s own policies, having introduced rules that block ad targeting based on “the age, gender or interests of persons under 18 years of age” in 2021.

Spark Foundry, a subsidiary of US-based advertising giant Publicis, reportedly worked with the companies to launch the illicit marketing campaign in Canada between February and April this year, before testing the program in the US in May. Meta and Google intended to expand the campaign to international markets and promote additional services like Facebook, according to the TF. The program was initiated amid a decline in Google Advertising Earnings and the migration of younger Meta users to rival services like TikTok.

Google has since launched an investigation into the allegations, and the campaign has been cancelled, which TF reports. “We prohibit ads tailored to people under 18, period,” Google said in a statement to the publication. “We will also take additional steps to reinforce with sales representatives that they should not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns that attempt to circumvent our policies.”