Known knowns and known unknowns
In an August email sent to the first agency buyer and seen by ADWEEK, a Google rep was discussing the client’s YouTube media buy and noted that they should try to capture the unknown category, too, because there could be teens there.
“I was shocked it was that explicit,” the first agency buyer said.
The first buyer and another buyer said they had no idea teens were in the unknown group and would not have sought to target these users without being informed by Google sales reps.
The first buyer has been targeting the unknown category for more than six months across several campaigns for one client, and will continue to since this is their client’s strategy.
When teens enter the ad targeting chat
The first buyer was working with a client already looking to target teens in indirect ways, like targeting the parents of teens (the logic being that it’s OK to target adults who give their kids permission to watch YouTube with them).
Google reps reached out proactively to a second buyer at a brand in the past two months to try to reach users above 16 because they might have some disposable income, that buyer said. Google said the brand could reach these 16-year-olds by targeting the unknown pool of users. The second buyer declined Google’s offer.
In early 2022, a large entertainment brand was looking to target teens for a youth program. Meta allows targeting teens, but Google does not (although Meta added more restrictions on how advertisers could target teens in 2023), said a third buyer, who worked at the agency representing the entertainment brand.
The entertainment brand’s frustrations at not being able to reach teens on YouTube escalated to a meeting with Google reps, according to the third buyer who was present at the meeting. Google said targeting teens was against its policy, but when the client threatened to move its Google spend to Meta, the Google reps suggested targeting unknown users because some teens might be in there, said the third buyer.
The third buyer was able to eventually convince its client to not target via the unknown category, given that the reporting would be less detailed (because their identities aren’t known, attribution is more difficult).
But later that year, the entertainment brand asked Google if it could upload a list of its own first-party data on teens to match with YouTube data and then let YouTube target those teens. This would also seem to violate Google’s general teen targeting policy.