Stealth Strategies: How Google & Meta Clandestinely Marketed to Young Audiences

Targeted advertisements can be incredibly powerful, especially when used on minors, which is why there are usually more rules for ads targeteing younger people. Google and Meta, two of the world’s largest online advertising platforms, allegedly collaborated on a secret project to target advertisements for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube.

This project disregarded Google’s policies against personalizing and targeting ads to people under the age of 18. The Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a group of users labelled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which Google knew skewed towards under-18s.

The two companies, along with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, launched a pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April of this year. Due to its success, it was then trialed in the US in May, with plans to expand it further. When contacted by the Financial Times, Google initiated an investigation into the allegations and the project has been canceled. Google denied directly targeting any registered YouTube users known to be under 18, but did not deny using the “unknown” loophole. Meta also denied any wrongdoing, stating that it adhered to its own policies as well as those of its peers when advertising its services.

This revelation comes at a time when lawmakers are pushing for stricter regulations to protect children from harmful online content. The US Senate recently passed a bill, the Kids Online Safety Act , that aims to protect minors from manipulative algorithms and other harmful functionality. However, the bill has faced criticism for its potential to limit LGBTQ+ minors from accessing important resources, as well as other issues. It’s currently unclear if the House of Representatives will approve the bill.

Thankfully, it seems like this project has already been terminated, but it’s still not a great move from Google or Meta.

Source: Financial Times