Covert collaboration: Google and Meta bend ad rules to target teens

Google and Meta secretly collaborated to target advertisements for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube, bypassing Google’s own rules for treating minors online, according to reports.

Google developed a marketing project for Meta to promote Instagram to 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users with adverts that promoted its rival’s photo and video app, according to the report in the Financial Times.

This Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a user group labelled as “unknown” in Google’s advertising system, which was known to include a high proportion of under-18s. Documents, as per the FT report, indicate that efforts were made to conceal the true intent of the campaign.

The project violated Google’s rules against personalising and targeting ads to under-18s and circumventing its guidelines. Meta’s YouTube campaign to attract younger users to Instagram was already underway when Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress in January, apologising to the families of children who had been exploited on his platforms.

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The two companies, typically fierce competitors began this effort late last year as Google aimed to boost advertising revenue and Meta sought to retain younger users amid competition from TikTok.

The companies partnered with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of Publicis to launch the pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April, and then trialled it in the US in May. They had plans to expand it internationally and promote to promote other Meta apps such as Facebook, FT cited people familiar with the matter as saying.

According to the report, despite being small pilot programs, Google saw them as an opportunity to develop a more lucrative relationship with Meta involving high-profile brand advertisements on YouTube and other platforms.

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Last year, Meta announced new updates to its advertising system, including the removal of gender as a targeting option for users under 18 on Facebook and Instagram. The company had said that these changes were meant to ensure that teens see ads relevant to their age and the products and services available in their location.