A third ad buyer, who was not authorized by her agency to speak to the press, said that at least once a quarter someone at the agency will reach out in a company Slack channel in desperation about the issue. Often they have tried multiple methods to block ads running on kids’ content, including exclusion lists and blocking specific channels, only for their ads to continue to show on these videos.
U.S. Senators Ed Markey and Marsha Blackburn this week sent an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission on the basis of the report, asking the agency to investigate YouTube for potentially violating COPPA.
Google has said the report does not prove it violated COPPA and draws false conclusions via the presence of cookies, which are used for fraud detection and frequency capping but not for tracking kids. It is legal to run ads on kids’ content—parents often watch the shows as well—so long as it is contextual, even if some advertisers would rather not pay for it.
Performance Max amplifies transparency risk
Google says it allows buyers to opt out of showing ads on “made for kids” content on the account level, which applies to all campaign types. But these controls often fail, buyers have told Adweek.
In response, buyers have tried to take a more hands-on approach to eliminate “made for kids” content, including using crowdsourced exclusion lists of channels found on Reddit, the third ad buyer source said.
This approach is most effective when ad buyers know exactly which kids’ channels their ads ran on inadvertently and can exclude those in the future.
But Performance Max, a popular Google ad format that uses artificial intelligence to place ads across Google’s massive swath of inventory, doesn’t let buyers know which YouTube channels their ads ran on, multiple buyer sources told Adweek.
Buyers have already been scrutinizing Google for a lack of transparency. Some say that Performance Max, which was rolled out globally in November 2021, gives brands too little insight into where their ads are running despite achieving good results.
The use of Performance Max—for its ease and performance—has grown. In May this year, Performance Max was 36.3% of total Google spend, according to software company Varos, based on data from its network.
Adalytics identified several brands, like BMO Bank and Intuit, that ended up on kids’ content via advertising on Performance Max.