Tech giants Google and Meta reportedly collaborated on a marketing project that targeted YouTube users aged 13 to 17 with ads promoting Instagram, circumventing Google’s own rules about how it treats minors online.
According to Reviewed documents Financial Times According to Google and insider sources, Google worked with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to run an ad campaign that intentionally targeted a group of YouTube users classified as “unknown” in the company’s ad system, a group the company knew disproportionately belonged to people under the age of 18. The project ignored Google’s policies prohibiting personalizing and targeting ads to minors, including serving ads based on demographics and circumventing the company’s own guidelines.
The collaboration between the two companies, usually fierce competitors as the world’s largest online advertising platforms, began late last year as Google sought to grow its advertising revenue and Meta scrambled to retain the attention of younger users against fast-growing rivals such as TikTok. The project, developed by Spark Foundry, a U.S. subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, was piloted in Canada from February to April this year and in the U.S. in May.
Google saw the pilot program as an opportunity to grow into a more lucrative “full-funnel” relationship with Meta, including more expensive “branded” advertising on YouTube and other platforms. Financial TimesGoogle launched an investigation into the allegations and the project was dropped.
Google prohibits personalizing ads to people under the age of 18 and said its policies go beyond what is required and are backed by technical safeguards, but the company did not deny that it had exploited an “unknown” loophole that allowed it to target users without specifically identifying them as minors.
Meta disagrees that choosing an “unknown” demographic amounts to personalization or circumventing the rules, and said it abides by its own policies and those of its peers when promoting its services. The company has publicly promoted its app to young people as a place for them to connect with friends, find communities and discover their interests.
Meta has long faced scrutiny over its policies toward minors, including ongoing lawsuits and investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, and in 2021 the company shelved plans to release a kid-friendly version of Instagram following public backlash and leaked research suggesting the app was harmful to teenage girls’ mental health.
Learn more of Financial Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
