It's been a unpleasant month for Google. Advertisers have spent billions of dollars over many years, trusting the self-reported data from the platforms and other Ad-tech vendors. Recently advertisers has came to know that these self-reported data, including the data in log files from the platform's failure to correctly report the data. Obviously, the data is clearly wrong, as reported to Google's customers. Below are the few cases that shows that google doesn't comply with its own policies.
Video ads sold as TrueView
TrueView ads are interactive format of ads by Google where the advertiser will pay for actual views of their ads, rather than impressions. These TrueView ad format were served on YouTube, millions of apps, and across the web. These ads are familiar as most people have seen it while watching YouTube videos. As per the google policy, TrueView ads are video ads that are In-stream, skippable ,audible, and plays with user-initation.
In-stream Ads - In-stream means the ads run next to YouTube video content, either before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll)
Out-stream Ads - Out-stream ads are independent of existing content and not next to YouTube video content and play in their own video player.
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| TrueView ads served off-page |
The screenshot above is documented by the Adalytics research, which shows video ads that ran off-page, out-stream, auto-played, muted, and not-skippable.
- Off-page means the ad ran outside of the part of the webpage the user is looking at.
- Out-stream denotes the video ad ran by itself, not next to a YouTube content video.
- Auto-played denotes the ads were automatically played, without any user initiated event(e.g. clicking or scrolling)
- Muted is self-explanatory.
- Non-skippable means the user couldn't even see the ad to skip it, In some cases the skip button was deliberately hidden or obstructed by another banner ad on top of the video ad blocking the skip button
These video ads were sold as TrueView, but they did not follow Google's own policy of TrueView ads.
Non-kid ads shown on kids channels and videos
YouTube is serving ads from major brands such as Mars, Hyundai, Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, Samsung, and many others on YouTube channels that are labeled as “Made for Kids.”.
Viewers of those ads on "Made for Kids" channels are clicking on the ads and going to brands websites. Those sites have code from 3rd party data partners that harvesting and sharing meta-data of those viewers upon the click through.
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| Non-kid ads were shown on "Made for Kids" channels and videos |
Behaviorally targeted / personalized ads serving on made for kids YouTube channels
Google claimed to not serve "personalized" or "behaviorally targeted" ads on "made for kids" YouTube channels. But, still personalized and behaviorally targeted ads are still being served on "made for kids" channels were found by experimental campaigns conducted by different parties. Another important detail that was surfaced from this experiment was the fact that many demographic attributes had large portions of "unknown."
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| Placement report for a behaviorally targeted ad campaign |
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| Demographic (parental status) report for a behaviorally targeted ad campaign This raises many questions about the accuracy of the media buys done on large platforms like Google. However, Google issued a response to the report and vehemently denied the claim but still the community is satisfied with their response. Content Source : https://adalytics.io/blog/invalid-google-video-partner-trueview-ads |
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