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Google and Meta have been implicated in a secret agreement to push Instagram ads to underage YouTube users, bypassing Google's policies on advertising to minors, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The deal, which sources with knowledge of the matter have confirmed, involved a campaign designed by Google to target YouTube users aged 13 to 17 with ads for Meta's popular image and video app, Instagram. This initiative aimed to attract younger users to Instagram, a key demographic for Meta as it competes against rising platforms like TikTok.
The campaign was covertly aimed at a group labeled as "the unknowns," a classification Google allegedly knew was composed mostly of under-18 users. Documents reviewed by the *Financial Times* indicate that deliberate efforts were made to obscure the true target audience of the ads, circumventing Google's strict rules against personalized and targeted advertising to minors.
This project represents a violation of Google's policies, which prohibit personalized ads to users under the age of 18 and ban efforts to bypass these rules through indirect targeting. The collaboration between Google and Meta began late last year, as Google sought to boost its advertising revenue while Meta aimed to retain the attention of younger users, especially against competitors like TikTok.
The campaign for Instagram was already active by January of this year, coinciding with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before the U.S. Congress, where he apologized to families of children who had been victims of exploitation on Meta's platforms. Despite the public apology, the partnership with Google continued, focusing on the lucrative teen demographic.
The companies also collaborated with Spark Foundry, a subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, to pilot the marketing program in Canada from February to April 2024, according to the *Financial Times*. The revelation of this secret deal between the two Silicon Valley titans raises significant ethical and legal questions, particularly regarding the protection of underage users online.
[Source: Financial Times]
