Google And Meta Reportedly Struck a Deal to Make and Show Ads Targeted at Minor Users. A report claims that the mountain view-based tech giant was working on a marketing project to develop ads that would run on its on its youtube platform. These ads wade for meta’s photo and video-shaking platform instagram and was reportedly targeted at teenagers. The Development Comes after Both Tech Companies have separately claimed that they do not target ads to users under the age of 18.
According to a Report By the Financial Times, Google and Meta Struck a Deal to Bring Minor Users to Instagram via Targeted Ads on YouTube. Citing documents acceed by the publication, the report claimd that google worked on the marketing project which was aimed at individuals between the ages of 13 and 17.
The claim, if true, violates Google’s ad-serving protects for teens policy Which states that the company will disable ad personalization and restrict sensitive ad categories for users under the age of 18.
As per the report, the search giant bypassed this policy by using a target demographic labelled as “unknown”. On its websiteGoogle says that “Unknown” Reefers to “People with Age, Gender, Parental Status, Or Household Income We Haven’t Identtified.” However, Google Had Thousands of Data Points on this category of users such as location, app downloads, Activity online, and more, the report claimed Citing people family family family with the matter.
The report also claimd that the company could confidently determine the younger users in the unknown category. The company is reported off the other age groups so the only demographic data was from the unknown group which has a higher proportion of minors. Unnamed Sources Told the publication that this was a way for google to hack its internal system.
Google told the publication, “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. ” While the company reportedly did not deny using the unknown category, it added that it will conduct it will invest its investment into the matter.
Meta Told the publication that google’s unknown targeting as an option is available to all advertisers. It further added, “We have clear Principles we adhere to how we market our apps to teens on other platforms.”