Meta and Google caught by the patrol. The advertising agreement between the two American giants contravenes the rules that the search engine itself has issued. Google has established the irregularity of “the personalization and targeting of advertisements for under-18s”, notes the British newspaper of Financial Times, in a survey published this Thursday, August 8. However, the Instagram campaign deliberately targeted a group of users called “unknown”, which Google knew was geared towards minors, the British media’s sources reported.
Mark Zuckerberg, faced with competition from the Chinese social network TikTok, was looking for visibility for Instagram – in his fold since 2012. The stakes, around the engagement on the platforms of the founder of Facebook, are measured by the efforts made to reassure investors. At the beginning of August, he told them that “the efforts made recently to attract more young people aged 18 to 29 had borne fruit”, according to the Financial Times. For its part, Google – in search of advertising revenue – could offer Meta the visibility it seeks via its YouTube video platform. Business is business and so far, nothing much is abnormal.
But Meta’s big Chinese rival is raiding minors, prompting the founding father of social networks to deliberately target this age group in its advertising campaign. FT – as it is called in the UK – has had access to numerous documents proving that “measures were taken to conceal the true intention of the campaign”. The announcement is a stain when one recalls Mark Zuckerberg’s statement to Congress last January. There, he apologized “to the families of children who were victims of sexual exploitation and abuse” on his platforms.
The underside of a wedding ring
To carry out their project, the usual rivals called on Spark Foundry, an American subsidiary of the French giant Publicis – specialized in advertising. “A pilot marketing program was launched in Canada between February and April of this year,” according to information from the Financial Times. Satisfied with the “apparent success”, they continued the experiment in the United States in May. “The companies had planned to extend it to other international markets. The promotion of other applications of the Meta group was also planned”, specify the sources contacted by the FTThe project was halted due to the investigation.
Google has denied any irregularities, recalling its policy of protection towards minors, assuring that “no YouTube user known to be under 18 years of age has been directly targeted.” However, an email consulted by the FTreports a request to Google, issued by an advertising manager at Spark Foundry. He demands from the search engine a presentation of the project and identifies as the “primary” demographic group to target, “13 to 17 year olds”, before demanding that the latter be measured by data collected directly from the platform’s users – in this case YouTube.
To avoid a clear transgression, a source told the FT that the use of group targeting was known as “unknown.” The Internet giant has not denied targeting this group of people. On its website, Google indicates that the “unknown” group refers to “users whose age, gender, parental status, or household income we have not identified.” But the group had at its disposal “thousands [d’autres] data”, from users’ locations via cell towers to their app downloads and online activities. This allowed us to determine with high confidence that the “unknown” group included many young users, particularly those under 18.
For her part, Meta assures that she does not agree with the fact that targeting the so-called “unknown” audience constitutes “personalization or circumvention of the rules.” As for the question posed to her by the FTasked if staff were aware that the audience for the “unknown” group was made up of younger users, the company declined to comment.