Meta and Google’s covert ‘Ad Campaign’ targeted teens, violating their own policies: Report

A new report from the Financial Times has unveiled a controversial advertising initiative involving tech giants Meta and Google, where the companies allegedly ran Instagram ads targeting teenagers on YouTube, in violation of Google's own advertising guidelines, reported India Today.

Reportedly, the investigation has sparked significant concern over the ethical practices of these major corporations.

According to the report, Meta and Google secretly collaborated on a campaign that displayed Instagram ads to users aged 13 to 17 on YouTube. This campaign blatantly disregarded Google's regulations, which explicitly forbid advertising to individuals under the age of 18. 

Moreover, the report reveals that these ads were targeted at a category identified as "unknown" in Google's advertising system—a label used for users whose age, gender, or other demographic details are not explicitly known.

However, it has been revealed that Google could accurately infer that these "unknown" users were likely teenagers, based on data from app downloads and online activities. This allowed both companies to effectively bypass the restrictions that Google implemented in 2021, which were intended to prevent ads from being targeted at minors based on their age, gender, or interests.

The campaign, which was reportedly orchestrated with the assistance of the US-based advertising agency Spark Foundry, initially ran in Canada earlier this year and was tested in the US in May. The plan was to eventually expand this campaign globally and use it to promote additional services, such as Facebook. The timing of the campaign coincided with a decline in Google's ad revenue and a shift of Meta's younger audience towards competing platforms like TikTok.

Once the campaign was exposed, Google initiated an investigation and promptly shut down the program. In response to the controversy, Google issued a statement asserting, "We prohibit ads being personalized to people under 18, period." The company also committed to reinforcing its policies with its sales teams to prevent similar violations in the future.

In 2023, Meta introduced several changes to its advertising system, including the removal of options to target users under 18 by gender on Facebook and Instagram. These changes were intended to ensure that ads shown to teenagers were age-appropriate and relevant to the products and services available in their region.