Google and Meta made a secret deal to target advertisements for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube, skirting the search company’s own rules for how minors are treated online.
According to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the matter, Google worked on a marketing project for Meta that was designed to target 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users with adverts that promoted its rival’s photo and video app.
The Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a group of users labeled as “unknown” in its advertising system, which Google knew skewed toward under-18s, these people said. Meanwhile, documents seen by the FT suggest steps were taken to ensure the true intent of the campaign was disguised.
The project disregarded Google’s rules that prohibit personalizing and targeting ads to under-18s, including serving ads based on demographics. It also has policies against the circumvention of its own guidelines, or “proxy targeting.”
Meta’s YouTube campaign to pull in younger users to Instagram was already in development when Mark Zuckerberg made a dramatic appearance before US Congress in January, where the Facebook co-founder apologized to the families of children who had been victims of sexual exploitation and abuse on his platforms.
The Silicon Valley-based pair, who are normally fierce competitors as the world’s two largest online advertising platforms, embarked on the effort late last year as Google sought to bolster its advertising earnings and as Meta scrambled to retain the attention of younger users against fast-growing rivals such as TikTok. Last week, Zuckerberg told investors that a recent push to engage more 18- to 29-year-olds had been bearing fruit.
The companies worked with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, to launch the pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April this year, according to the people and documents seen by the Financial Times.
Due to its perceived success, it was then trialed in the US in May. The companies had planned to expand it further, to international markets and to promote other Meta apps such as Facebook, people familiar with the matter said.
While the pilot programs were small, Google saw them as an opportunity to grow into a more lucrative “full-funnel” relationship with Meta that would involve more splashy and expensive “brand” adverts on YouTube as well as its other platforms.
When contacted by the FT, Google initiated an investigation into the allegations. The project has now been canceled, a person familiar with the decision said.
Google said: “We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period. These policies go well beyond what is required and are supported by technical safeguards. We’ve confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here” because no registered YouTube users known to be under 18 were directly targeted by the company.
However, Google did not deny using the “unknown” loophole, adding: “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.”
Meta said it disagreed that selecting the “unknown” audience constituted personalization or a circumvention of any rules, adding that it adhered to its own policies as well as those of its peers when advertising its services. It did not respond to questions about whether staff were aware that the “unknown” group skewed to younger users.